


Gentle

by esama



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Do not repost, Don't copy to another site, Existentialism, Feels, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Magic, Mental Health Issues, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-06-29 15:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esama/pseuds/esama
Summary: In which Desmond and Clay live.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Proofread by Nimadge, many thanks

The noise of it is unimaginable. The pain Desmond had expected, the burn, the agony that he had braced himself for, even the heat. He _knew_ it would hurt the moment he touched the Eye and whatever power it has grabbed a hold of him. He didn't expect the noise, though.

It rushes at him like a train coming at full speed. Blood is rushing in his ears, it should be too loud for him to hear anything else, but he can. Thunder, a storm front's worth of it, rolling over him, rattling him to his bones. A roaring fire that consumes the whole building, tearing through all it's structures. Crashing of waves, the crash of an earthquake, buildings falling, collapsing in a landslide. It's like all the noise of destruction the world can produce comes at him all at once, at all angles – it's almost worse than the pain. There's just _so much_ , too much, happening all at once.

He thinks he's shouting, screaming, but he can't hear it over the rushing power that courses through him, and it seems to go on forever, like he's caught in the eternity of cacophonic noise, like there is nothing else in the world, just this fucking sound, all of the sounds.

And then it cuts off.

The silence that follows is almost worse than the noise. It falls so quickly, like at a drop of a severing blade – like a power out in a full nightclub, cutting off the music, the lights, the fog machine and the voices of people. Suddenly there is just… nothing.

Desmond can't hear himself either. Can't see, can't feel – but he's _there_. He's thinking, he's observing the nothingness, so, he's there. Not sure where. He's _somewhere_. That's something. There's no pain anymore either, that's nice.

He almost, _almost_ knows what this is. It's like he's teetering on his toes, reaching for something on the top shelf – just a little further and he'll know what this is. Death – no, probably not. His ancestral memories kind of proved that there's probably nothing after death, and this is _something_. This is something else. But what, what –

"Hey, Seventeen, you mind if I take over for a bit?"

Clay?

Desmond turns – sort of. He doesn't have a body to turn around and no limbs to turn it with, but he turns somehow anyway, and there is Clay – there are the _numbers_ of Clay. The code that forms the individual that was Clay Kaczmarek, anyway – his DNA, held suspended in nothingness. Or, no. _Saved_ in… in Desmond.

"What did you do?" Desmond asks, even as Clay brushes through him, and some semblance of reality asserts itself.

His hands, his arms, his legs, his body – it's all back, but also not. It's like a scene captured in a photo frame, everything's standing still – he's completely frozen in the act of holding his hand over the Pedestal. Juno is gone, Minerva is gone, everyone is gone – even the Grand Temple itself is gone. There's just him, suspended in the act of activating the Eye, and the Eye itself, floating in the grey nothingness.

And there's Clay, on the other side of the pedestal.

"I saved you, didn't I?" Clay asks, holding his hands over the Eye, staring at it with glowing eyes and intent expression. "Feel free to thank me any time."

"Thank you," Desmond says, obligingly. "What is this?"

"The last little puzzle," Clay says and glances at him. "After all I did, did you really think I'd go without a fight? Nah, brother, no way in fucking hell. Juno yanked my chain left and right in life and death, but I'll be damned if I let her win this easily."

"That… doesn't really explain anything," Desmond says, frowning. "And the Eye is supposed to save the world – there's billions of lives on the line, Clay, don't you dare –"

"I'm not going to stop you from saving the world, don't worry," Clay says, giving him a grin. "I'll just do a little something on the side here, if you don't mind. Juno didn't tell you everything about this, neither did Minerva. This," he waves his hands over the Eye. "Is so much more than you can imagine. It can do anything! But they didn't dare to tell you, because what if you chose to do something… else with it? What if you got… notions? What if you didn't do exactly what Juno wanted you to do?"

"Clay -" Desmond says urgently, leaning forward. "The Solar Flare _has_ to be stopped."

"It will be, it will be," Clay says. "But don't you see it – the opportunity for so much more? This thing is going to try to kill you, Desmond – because that is what Juno wants, she can't bear a rival, and Minerva doesn't care beyond your designated task of pressing the button. Do you want to die, Desmond?"

"Well, obviously not – "

"We can live," Clay says, leaning forward. "We can _live_. Don't you want to?"

Desmond hesitates – but he can see it now, the power brimming between their hands, in the Eye – it's like holding a shard of the universe in his hand. "You saved yourself in me, didn't you?" Desmond asks. "That was what the hug was about – you encoding yourself into me inside the Animus."

"Well, yes, obviously," Clay agrees. "Didn't do you any harm, did it – in fact, haven't had a Bleeding Effect episode since then, have you? It's been a smooth sailing – you're welcome. Now, do you want to live?"

Desmond searches his face and then looks down at the Eye. It really feels like it's staring at him, too. "Yes," he bites out. "But how? Your body is gone, and mine is – it's burning, I can feel it burning –"

"Just rewrite it," Clay says, leaning in to stare into the Eye. "We're but code on the skin of the universe, our DNA but strings of data. Rewrite the data, encode it into the universe, and hit Run. Look, here – I'll show you. Here – here, here, here…"

Desmond leans in and loses himself in the points of data, like falling into the sea of stars. If the universe runs on code, it's not binary and it's not on a screen, it's a multidimensional lattice of stars and layers of reflective surfaces – an endlessly folded tesseract of angles and shards and mirrors and -

There's the noise again, rushing at him with the power of the apocalypse. Somewhere, the Solar Flare has begun.

* * *

Desmond wakes up with his cheek in the sand. It's familiar enough to make him jump up immediately in alarm – the fucking _Animus Island_ , again? Seriously – how many times had he woken up here, after how many aborted sessions in Istanbul and in the damn partitions, trying to make sense of his broken mind, how many -

Standing up feels weird – vertigo is new. So is the wind in his hair, the feel of his shoe slipping on the wet sand. There's sand on his cheek, stuck there by moisture – it's raining down on his shoulder and chest, little pitter patter of granules. He can feel it, it rasps against his stubble as he brushes at his cheek to get it off. Cold and grainy and a little sharp and wet.

Animus Island didn't have these details. It had wind, but it didn't _feel_ like wind, and sand didn't stick to clothing, or to skin. Everything felt _wrong_ and _off_ , and he didn't feel vertigo like this. His head didn't feel heavy, and it does here.

Right arm _hurts_ too, which is something that couldn't happen on the Animus Island. Desmond would know – both he and Clay tried. There were no sensations on the Animus Island, good or bad. Nothing like this.

"S-shit," Desmond groans, grabbing his right hand with his left as the pain coalesces into the full on muscle cramp along his arm, his fingers twitching and tensing. His hand looks fine – no burn or anything, that's awesome – but it doesn't _feel_ fine. Every muscle is tense, and his skin feels too hot and too hard. "Fucking… ow."

Rubbing at the aching arm and tugging at his palm to try and make his fingers relax, Desmond looks around. It is the Animus Island, it looks like it – but it's also not. The sand is the wrong colour, and the sky is just… completely off. It look real, it looks _right_. Blue skies and white clouds, wind pushing them over to the left, tugging at his hair while it's at it. It's nice and not at all what he was expecting.

"Clay?" Desmond calls, stumbling away from the sand. "Clay, are you here – Sixteen? Hey, Clay! Are you in here!"

He has five minutes of growing panic, searching the lower half of the island. The stones of the portal to Istanbul are there, but no portal itself – just a wall of stone, surrounded by a misshapen frame. There are the blocks of stone here and there, angular and artificial, but they feel real when he touches them. The stone is warm from sunlight. Some patches of grass around their roots, they feel real.

Desmond thinks he's either going insane, or the world has. Something has, anyway.

"Oh, thank god," Desmond sighs, when he finally finds Clay. The guy is on the top of the island, where the portals to partitions stand – Clay is sitting in the grass inbetween, staring at them with wide, sightless eyes. "Clay, hey," Desmond calls, and slowly, like a doll coming to life, Clay turns his head.

"Se-Seventeen? But –" Clay asks and then jumps to his feet, looking around. "The Animus Island?"

"It isn't – though, maybe it is? I don't know – it doesn't feel like the Animus," Desmond says, walking over to him, still gripping at his aching arm. "What did you _do_?"

"I didn't do this! I just – I just wanted to have a _body_ again, I wanted to be alive again," Clay says and looks around. He's pale and his eyes are still wide, his pupils blown wide open. "I thought – I thought this was – I thought I was _back there_. This looks just like – did she do this, did she send us here, did she fuck me over again – is this – is _this_ –?!"

Desmond leans down, grabs a handful of loose dirt from the ground and throws it at him. Clay shuts up with a sputter and then stares down as the dirt rains on his shoes, a little rush of reality. "What did you do?" Desmond asks. "Exactly, when you – did whatever you did."

"I –" Clay starts and stops immediately, crouching down to poke at the ground. "Oh, it feels real," he murmurs, picking up a pebble. "I can – I can feel it, it's real. Oh my god, _it's real_!"

"Clay!" Desmond snaps, taking a step closer. "Focus! What did you do, exactly?"

"Right – right. Uh. I wrote a virus, attached it to your DNA," Clay says, digging two handfuls of dirt, ripping out a patch of grass while he's at it, and standing up, just… squishing it in his fingers in wonder. He lets out a delirious little giggle. "It was supposed to activate if you ever touched the Eye – and you did, and it did, and I can _feel this_. It's real."

"Okay, that's – yeah. Why is the _Animus_ _Island_ here?" Desmond asks.

"It – it must've gotten written into the Virus accidentally. Code corruption while it was being deleted – we both piggybacked on your code," Clay says. "So, when we hit Execute, the Island got rewritten too."

"Right," Desmond says, looking around. "You just… wrote yourself and also an entire island into my DNA, alright."

"We're all just data, when you get down to it," Clay says, holding the dirt up and to the sun. "Less data in this then there is in you – we're barely a typing error in your library."

"Right. Great," Desmond says, eyeing him. Clay rubs his fingers through the dirt and then grins as it rains down, luxuriating in the sensation. And… yeah, Clay's been dead for… for a while. "You _mad bastard_ ," Desmond says and then pulls Clay into one-armed hug.

"Oh, hey," Clay says, going completely still. Then, quieter he says. "Oh, wow, you're warm."

"Yeah," Desmond says, pulling him closer, pressing his chin against Clay's shoulder. He hadn't even liked the guy when he'd known him – or his code, or whatever it was. But damn. Just, _damn._ "Any idea where we are?"

"We're _alive_ , my plan worked and I have a body again. I have a beating _heart_ again. I don't even care," Clay says against his shoulder, and latches on like a leech, fingers digging into the back of Desmond's hoodie desperately. "I thought you'd be pissed."

"I _am_."

"Okay," Clay agrees and then says, awkwardly, "Doesn't feel like it."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees, and grips him a little tighter. "Asshole. It's weird to see you again." But it's also nice.

"Yeah, you too," Clay says.

They stand there, hugging tightly, long enough for it to get awkward, and even then it takes a while before they release each other. Clay looks at him uneasily and then, making a face, brushes the dirty handprints off Desmond's hoodie, muttering, "Sorry."

"It's fine," Desmond says, looking him over and then looking at his hand. The cramp is easing a bit, but it still feels… a bit weird. Whatever. "So, alive. That's nice, but I think we should try to figure out where we are. Because this," he motions to the open ocean all around them, "is definitely not the Grand Temple."

"Yeah, no, obviously not," Clay agrees, glancing around. "We should – make sure this is reality. Just in case. Make sure we're on Earth and not… someplace else."

"In the Animus, you mean," Desmond agrees. "Would be nice to be sure of that, for once."

"The Animus, yeah, that's it," Clay says. "Or a pocket universe, another dimension, another world – another planet… that sort of thing."

"Right," Desmond says. "Those are an option."

"We just rewrote reality a bit," Clay points out. "The Eye was never really beta-tested – the Isu were all long gone by the time their automated systems finished constructing it."

"The Isu?"

"Precursors, the First Civilisation, The Ones That Came Before. It's what they called themselves – the Isu."

"Right," Desmond says with a frown. "Okay. Determining that this is reality on Earth. How – how do we do that?"

Clay considers it for a moment, looking around. "Back in the Animus, everything here was only surface level," he says. "Polygons over empty space, you know – nothing underneath. So…" he peers at the ocean. "Let's see if we can go for a swim."

* * *

They can go for a swim. There's depth to the ocean, there's temperature to it, there's chaotic flow in the push and pull of waves, all sorts of natural fluid dynamics which Desmond has never thought about all that much, but which, now that he can feel them, feel… just so special that it almost brings tears to his eyes.

It's been a… really, really long time since he felt real ocean water.

For Clay it has been even longer. It takes the guy a while before he remembers how to swim – longer, before he even tries. For a while they both are just walking along the bottom and diving underneath, just to look at the sand and the rocks and the glimpses of fins and scales beneath the waves. Clay comes away with a broken seashell and spends good ten minutes fascinated by it, like a little kid.

They're alive. And wet. And stuck in the middle of the ocean – real ocean, salty and everything – on an island that probably didn't exist there just a day ago.

"So," Desmond says, sitting hip deep in the water, toes sticking out every time the wave pulls back for another go. "I got sand up my ass crack, so, I'd say this is real."

"Yeah," Clay says, rocking back and forth and occasionally kicking up a bit of wet sand, just to watch it splash further away and spread in the water. "No way would anyone code this much detail into the Animus simulation."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees. "But where are we? Nowhere near New York, going by the temperature."

"New York?"

"That's where the Grand Temple is – near Turin, New York."

Clay says nothing for a moment, standing in the waves with only a wet pair of boxers on, with the backdrop of the endless ocean and lightly clouded skies behind him. He looks both like a picture in a travel brochure and a very awkward holiday photo – the guy is way too pale. He's already getting a little red around the shoulders and back.

"You're going to get a sunburn," Desmond comments.

Clay blinks and looks at him. "Huh," he says and glances at his arm. "Not an issue I thought I'd have again, sunburns. Damn."

"Yeah," Desmond says and tugs his knees up, digging his toes into wet sand. "So. Where are we? And how are we going to get out of here?"

"Well," Clay says, frowning. "I… don't know."

Desmond stares at him in silence, waiting for more – but Clay doesn't say anything else, looking down with a frown. Then the guy crouches down in the water and picks up a piece of stone. "Clay, there's nothing _on_ this island," Desmond points out. "There's nothing to eat, nothing to _drink_. Nothing to… to build a boat out of or anything."

Clay frowns, turning the stone in hand. It's angular – a triangle. A lot of the stones are like that – all of the sand is like that, little loose voxels.

"I," Clay says and looks up. "I don't know. I thought when – if this happened, it would happen wherever the Eye was. That I'd appear in a new body there – I didn't plan the island."

"You don't know," Desmond says slowly, staring at him. Clay has no plan, didn't plan for this. "Okay," Desmond says. "Okay. We'll… wait until it's night and try and see where we are by the stars."

Clay looks up, blinking, and then nods. "Yeah, that – that sounds like something," he says quietly and his shoulders slump a little. "Would be a bit pathetic if right after I got my way we ended up starving to death in the middle of nowhere."

"A bit, yeah," Desmond says. "We're not dead yet. And hey, maybe… maybe we're not in the middle of nowhere. Maybe we're near a shipping lane or something. And an island appearing out of nowhere, people should notice that, right? On satellites and stuff?"

Clay looks up. "You'd think. It's not a very big island, though. And if we're in the middle of the Pacific ocean, well… why would anyone look?"

Desmond imagines the vastness of about the _entire half of the planet_ all around them and swallows. That's not a very hopeful thought, is it? "Let's… let's not draw conclusions until the night," he says. "We should probably… try and dry up while the sun is still out and it's warm. We don't want to be wet and cold when it goes down."

"Aren't you the survival expert," Clay says and pushes himself to his feet. "Obviously Connor's been good for you."

"Yeah, he was a ball of sunshine," Desmond agrees wryly and stands up, brushing the wet sand off as well as he can. "Out of curiosity, what was your plan after you did get a body?"

"Run like hell," Clay says, wading out of the water. "And then get a hamburger."

Desmond grins. "Man after my own heart," he says, to which Clay grins a little weakly.

"Speaking of which," he says. "Hunger is going to be an issue sometime soon. Any chance any of Connor's hunting abilities stuck with you?"

"I guess we better hope they did," Desmond says and looks around. "Whether we have anything to hunt with here, though… I don't think even Connor could fish with his bare hands. I have my knife and blade, but… spear would be better. Or, you know… a fishing pole."

"Hm," Clay says. "Let's see what we can do, then. I might have a safety pin on me. I did when I died. Could make a hook out of it."

Desmond imagines having a safety pin, encoded, however briefly, into his DNA, and shakes his head. "If everything was carried over, then I have a medkit in my backpack," he says. "It might have a syringe. Oh, and I might have a multitool. I think I left it in my backpack."

Clay casts him a look. "Let's find out."

* * *

Desmond manages to catch three fishes, before it gets too dark to continue trying, by using a fishing hook made of Clay's safety pin. It's not the best solution, but it works, and with the line made out of a strand of paracord Desmond had on him, it makes functional enough fishing line.

Cooking the fish is a bigger issue. Desmond has a lighter – but there is not much in the way of wood on the island they can burn. There are some twigs and such from a few stubby bushes, but they burn badly and might have other use in the future, so neither of them want to waste them immediately. And burning their clothing just for a bit of food does not seem like the smartest idea.

"Well, if it comes to it, raw fish it is," Clay says. "But I'd rather not, until it _does_ come to it. I just got this body back, I'd rather not give it parasites."

"Maybe we can dry it," Desmond says, a little dubiously.

"Maybe," Clay agrees wryly.

Desmond hangs the fish to dry by the paracord between two angular pieces of rock. If it worked, then good, and if not, he could throw them back into the sea and fish for some more. Neither of them is starving to death yet, anyway, so… there's some time to figure it out. Water would be an issue before food, anyway – fish-borne parasites wouldn't really weigh in much, if they just died of dehydration. Animus Island kind of sucks, as far as survivability goes.

Then they wait for the sun to set, the sky to darken, and the stars to come out.

"Did you have plans for after the end of the world?" Clay asks quietly, as they sit on the prickly glass and stare up.

"Not really," Desmond admits. "The others had plans for a holiday, Shaun and Rebecca, you know. They wanted to take me somewhere, give me a break. Oh, and Shaun wanted to turn the dial back on the Animus, see if we could see into Eden. But I… I guess I always felt it wasn't of any use, thinking about the future."

"Knew you were gonna die, huh?"

Desmond doesn't answer, looking down.

"With Vidic and Cross dead, that's… all of us," Clay comments. "All of us Animus Subjects died. I guess as far as life expectancy statistic goes, that's not a good one."

Desmond frowns. "Vidic was an Animus Subject?"

"Number 2," Clay scoffs. "Of course, he did it willingly, and when he started noticing side effects he just stopped. It wasn't like with the rest of us – Cross was turned into an Animus junkie before he was let off. The rest of us, we were used up. Well, aside from you."

"Cheerful," Desmond comments. "I wonder if his death means there won't be anymore Animus Program."

"Psh. Doubt it. The damn thing is too useful," Clay says and squints. "See any stars yet?"

Desmond looks up, concentrating – but it's still too light out. "No, nothing," he admits and rubs his hands together. His right hand still hurts. It's not the only thing that does – there's a weird, faint but persistent ache along his other arm too, and on his legs. "If it turns out we're doomed to die here, I am going to be so pissed, just so you know. And blame you."

"That's fair," Clay says. "Won't be thrilled myself, honestly. I was kind of hoping for more than this."

"Yeah, I bet."

Sun disappears beneath the horizon, and slowly it gets darker and darker, sky turning from red and orange to darker blue until they can finally see the first glimpses of stars – not enough yet to see constellations, but the brightest stars are out, and thankfully, all of them look familiar. There's Sirius, first to show up – and one by one, other familiar stars are popping up. Now, if only he could see Polaris…

Then something else, another source of light, draws their eyes downwards.

"Um," Desmond says, lifting his right hand and spreading out his fingers. "This is new."

There are lines on his skin, straight as if drawn with a ruler – they go down from his fingertips along the each finger, down to his palm, to his wrist and further. In the darkness of the early night, they glow faintly with pale gold, almost working as their own light source. They fade out going down his inner arm, but… he can see the ghost of lines there too, going down further.

Clay clicks his tongue. "That… that looks a lot like what the Isu looked like," he comments. "They had circuitry on their skin, too. I don't know why, but… but they did."

Desmond swallows, touching the lines with his other hand. He can _feel_ them, they're a bit warm to the touch. "Okay," he says, closing his fingers into a fist and spreading them out again. "I am officially starting to get freaked out now."

Clay looks at him, looking between his arm and his face and then away, frowning. "You know," he says then, quietly. "You have a lot of Isu DNA in you."

"Yeah, I know," Desmond says, grimacing. "Not something I like to think about much, to be honest."

Clay says nothing for a moment and then turns his eyes upwards. "Well," he says. "The stars are out. I think I see Polaris now. Can you tell where we are?"

Desmond looks up, closing his hand into a fist and lowering it to keep the light out of his eyes. Then he tilts his head. "Well, we're in the northern hemisphere, at least," he says and stands up, to take a better look. "Latitude wise somewhere between… 30 and 35, maybe?"

"That could be anywhere," Clay says. "Anything on longitude?"

"I'd need to know the time accurately for that," Desmond answers with a shrug. "Definitely further south than New York anyway."

"So we could be anywhere from Pacific Ocean to the Caspian Sea?" Clay asks wryly. "That's helpful."

"Yeeah," Desmond agrees, squinting at the stars. "Something's off."

"Like what?" Clay asks.

"Well, that, for one," Desmond says and points at the full moon. "That was half full last night. That's… probably bad, isn't it?"

"… Yeah," Clay says. "That's probably bad, yes."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees.


	2. Chapter 2

Clay wakes up feeling warm in one half of his body and cold in the other. He takes a moment to appreciate the sensation in all of its duality – not just having a body that is capable of feeling it, but the imperfectness of it. It's such a uselessly complicated thing to feel, no one would encode something like that, right? Point for reality.

He's cold where he's lying on the sand, where his back is against the light breeze. It's tugging at his hair, making the lapel of his shirt brush against his cheek – he can feel the temperature of both, and he's never taking either for granted again. His arm is smushed up underneath him, circulation half cut off, he can already feel the pins and needles – not something he's particularly missed, but it's amazing, having actual weight again. Sand in his hair, in his ear, something poking at his neck, a blade of grass or a stick…

And Desmond, in front of him, lying face to face with him. He has one arm under his head, and his body is bent towards Clay a little – one of his arms is around Clay's waist, Clay's own gripping at Desmond's backpack strap, holding tightly. It's warm where their bodies touch. He can smell Desmond's breath, hear it. See the flutter of his lashes, slow movement of the iris under the lid. Desmond's still sleeping, dreaming.

Clay dreamed of numbers, the code that made up the environment of the Animus Island, the endless, thankless days spent trying to modify it, break out of it. No wonder it piggybacked on Desmond – the whole thing is all but etched in Clay's brain, line by line.

Clay's hungry.

He hasn't been hungry in… in a long time. Forgot how that felt like, the insistence of it, the gnawing not-pain of it. Like having a hole inside you, craving to be filled – a line of code, missing a section. Copy and paste item food here.

He's still holding onto Desmond's backpack strap. It feels stiff against his hand, the side of the tightly woven strap digging into his finger, the side of the plastic buckle. Slanted backpack, whose idea that was, the thing is so inefficient. It's not even that big, and it must throw Desmond's centre of balance off. Though, who knows, it might've been a conscious decision on Desmond's part – if Clay remembers it right, the guy has a slanted gait. Or he did. Always twisted weirdly to the left when walking. Hip injury maybe? Would be like Desmond to subconsciously figure out a way to compensate for it by adding a sort of restraining weight by a slanted backpack.

He smells like he's _real_. Morning breath and sweat and human.

Clay shudders and pulls away, backing out from Desmond's sleeping, cozy form, and looking around instead. The island is still there, in all of its fucked up glory. Every stone artificial, every pillar a perfectly formed rectangular cuboid, every rock with precisely calculated number of angles. It looks better in a natural light, there are fuller shadows, scattering of reflected light – can't get this kind of refraction from calculated shell shading. And yet, it's still the fucking Animus Island.

Standing up, Clay looks toward the portal stones, the one he built for Desmond – the ones that led to Ezio's memories, and through Ezio to Altaïr. The portal stands empty now, as do the partition portals up on the higher part of the island, their pillars going up, up, into forever. Breaking physics there, that's not worrisome at all… Either that, or they're not actually _stone_ but metal, and hard enough metal that the wind doesn't have an affect on them. Or they go deep enough into the rock of the island to have one hell of a structural base.

Now what else here is fucked up…

The weight of stones is… more real, than it was. Sand, dirt, gravel, it all feels loose and heavy and real, scattering and spreading under touch, forming into new shapes and clusters, sticking together when wet, falling apart when dry. Rocks are about right too, they're heavy but he can _move them_ now, even the bigger ones, with enough force. They're no longer part of the general structure of the island, but loose objects, transformable. Real.

There are little clusters of stone rising from the ocean around them, with black pillars strewn on them, like obsidian – same stuff the portals are made out of. There used to be more of them. There used to be pillars, floating about the island. He wonders what happened to those.

It's all very real, Clay muses while sitting down to stare at the ocean. It's real, but it feels like… like too much.

Leaning down, he rips out a rock from under a tuft of grass and turns it over in his hand. It's pale, with perfect angles, a rectangular cuboid – there's dirt clinging to it, which he can brush off with his hand. Real, but… weird. Like the sand, the pebbles, it's just a little off. It wasn't shaped with tools, it wasn't chipped at or sawed to make it this shape – it was _Created_ into reality like this. Programming made into nature – as far as reality is concerned, this stone was naturally formed into a perfect brick. Which, granted, could happen, but the probability of it is… pretty small. And there are hundreds, thousands of rocks and stones like this on the island – too perfect to be real, but real nonetheless.

Clay hefts the rock in his hand, tossing it up and catching it, testing the weight. Real, heavy, consistent and yet there's something… off. He tosses it up again, higher, and catches it again. The impact feels weird on his hands, the corner digging into his palm, a little bit painful. Still, something's off with it.

It feels like… like… like he could…

After a moment of awkward, uneasy hesitation, Clay picks up another stone, a sharp triangle one, and tries to break the first one in half. He hefts the second stone up, aiming its sharp corner down on the middle of the first stone, and just as he's about to make a contact…

The first stone breaks quietly and obligingly in half. Just, snap, and there are two square pieces of stone, instead of one rectangular one. They settle on the grass by their weight, slightly apart from each other, a matching set. And he definitely didn't make actual contact to break them apart.

"… shit," Clay mutters, dropping the triangle stone and grabbing the now split parts of the original rectangular cuboid for closer examination.

Inside, the formerly rectangular stone looks real, feels real – feels like it did before. It doesn't look like he cut it in half, or even like it broke – it looks like the nature just… formed it like this, into two perfect pieces. Perfect cubes. Except it definitely didn't.

Clay takes one of the halves and eyes it suspiciously. Then, narrowing his eyes, he decides to _Cut_ it in half, like selecting a section of a code in his mind and _splitting it_ into two entities.

And the stone is thus cut in half, silently and neatly breaking apart into two equal rectangular shapes, again. What was once one, is now in three pieces. And he's pretty sure he can keep the process up until forever, if he wanted to.

With slightly shaking hands, Clay holds the two pieces together and thinks, _Combine_. Two pieces of stone become one, sticking back together as if glued. Then, incredulous, he thinks _Copy and Paste_ , drawing his hands apart as he finds himself holding two identical halves of a rock. Back to three, with one extra half which should not exist.

Clay holds the extra half up, and thinks, _Delete_. And just like that, he's holding just one half again, the third one gone, the total sum back down to two stones.

"Shit," Clay says again and looks up. So. _Fuck_.

There's still the wind. His shoes are making marks on the grass from where he's bouncing his knees. There's weight and reality to the stones in his hand. The wind is cool and carries moisture in it. He's hungry, and thirsty, and regretting not staying asleep. It still feels real.

And he has command over the shape of reality.

* * *

By the time Desmond wakes up, Clay has built them an oven. It seemed like the thing to do. Food is an issue, heat is an issue – trying to cook anything over the open flame would get them a net result of a lot of wasted heat, with the wind whisking most of it away. Having shelter for the fire to keep the heat in is just practical, and since he has the ability to endlessly copy perfectly tile-shaped rocks into infinity apparently…

So, he builds an oven.

"Morning," Desmond says with a groan, spotting him by it, with a collection of twigs he took from the sparse bushes around the island. "Did you make that?"

"Oh yeah," Clay says. "I was bored." And freaked out, mostly freaked out. "I think we fucked up reality. Here – catch."

It's one tenth of a rock he split into smaller parts – one inch by two inch by two inch rectangular piece of unnatural rock. Desmond catches it and turns it over his hand. "Okay," he says, flipping the stone in his fingers. "It's a… square little rock. It's cute."

"You're cute. Think _Copy and Paste_ at it," Clay says, and then watches, his knee bouncing nervously, as Desmond hesitates, the stone stilling in his hand as he looks up at Clay. Slowly, Seventeen sits up, watching him warily, and then looks down on the stone.

Nothing happens.

"Try _Cut_ ," Clay urges. "And, actually think about it. Think about wanting to cut the stone into two pieces – think _I want this Cut in half._ "

"Okay, sure, I'll. Right," Desmond says, folding his legs and rubbing one of his calves with one hand while staring at the stone in the other. He frowns, concentrating – he's really trying, Clay has to hand it to him. But nothing happens.

Desmond looks up. "Did you… have a weird dream, or something?"

" _No_ – give me that," Clay says and snatches the rock from his hand. "Look," he says, holds the rock, and thinks, _Copy, Paste, Paste, Paste…_ and in an instant, the little rocks spill over the edge of his palm and rain down into a little pile of perfect little blocks.

Desmond stares at the little rocks, uncomprehending, and then looks up at him. "Um," he says.

"I think the island is still _programmable_ ," Clay says, tipping the last little stone, perfectly identical to all the others, onto the top of the little pile. "And I can… edit it."

"Okay, that's… terrifying," Desmond says, coughing and rubbing at his elbow, wincing a little. "What – what else can you do?"

"I've just tried the basic shit. Cut, Copy, Paste – Delete," Clay says, also wincing, and points at the oven he made. "One stone, copied hundred and fourteen times. I figured it would be more efficient for, you know… cooking. The fish, I mean."

Desmond looks at the oven, eyes travelling over the neatly laid stonework Clay had made, and then back at him. "That's freaky," he says. "But handy. Can you make water?"

"I have editorial command over reality and you want water?" Clay demands.

"I'm thirsty, and death of dehydration will suck," Desmond says. "I mean, unless this means… this isn't…" he looks around. "Um."

Clay looks around too, grimacing. "I – don't know?" he says. "I mean, I'm hungry and I dropped a brick on my toe earlier, and it still hurts – this feels real, but also…" he can copy paste stones into infinity, so there's that. "I have no idea."

"Well, I am still thirsty," Desmond says. "So, making water, is that a thing you can… do?"

"I don't know," Clay says and sits up straighter. "I'm going to try, hold on."

What would even be the command for creating water. Insert &#h2o? He's not actually working in code here, though, this works by thinking. Thinking _water_ does nothing though, _Create Water_ just sounds like a fucking _spell._ If he had a menu of elements, like back when he was recreating representation of Istanbul for Desmond, he could drag and drop in any element he wanted, including water… but it's not like there's a screen here for him to work with.

It feels… less like the other things did, somehow. Like it's a function that hasn't been coded in, or like… like it's an impossible task to execute.

"I don't think I can," Clay admits. "I can't create things, I can just – edit. I think."

"So, if you had a _bit_ of clean fresh water, you could copy it?" Desmond asks.

"Maybe," Clay says and closes his hands into fists. "Doesn't this freak you out?"

"I had an entire island and _you_ encoded into my DNA," Desmond comments. "I guess I kind of expected something like this. And hey, you made an oven! That's awesome."

Clay doesn't know whether he should preen or lob a stone at him for being an unflappable idiot. "This might not be real," he says. "We might be in the Grey. Grey is editable – maybe we accidentally created a pocket in the Grey which looks like it's real, feels like it's real, but it's more like make-believe than anything."

"Grey?"

"It's a… it's a dimension. Layer of reality – the Isu used it with their tech, it's like a code screen of the universe," Clay says.

Desmond looks at him expressionlessly and then shakes his head and stands up with a groan, stretching and then wincing as something in his back lets out a popping noise. "You know, all those theories about reality being a simulation?"

"Yeah?" Clay says warily, daring him to go there.

"Yeah. Let's not go there," Desmond says. "So, does the oven work?"

"I haven't tried yet," Clay admits, looking at it. "But it should."

Desmond nods. "Let's have a try, then."

* * *

The oven works, and between them they manage to cook the fish Desmond had caught the day before. It's not _good_ as food goes, unsalted unseasoned fish is not exactly the height of high cuisine… but it's _food_. It's food with a taste, even a bad one, with texture, with a _feel_ when it goes down, the whole nine yards. _Food._

Even the act of picking out fish bones, how greasy his fingers get, how the fish burns his tongue at first, all of the messy little detains of eating, all of it's just… _novel._

Desmond watches him eat – and almost sob over – his meagre breakfast without saying anything, picking bits of fish and slowly eating them himself. Every so often Clay catches him rubbing at his arms or his calves, massaging his shoulder, like he's got a whole body ache going on, but he doesn't say anything and so Clay doesn't comment on it.

The lines of yellow are more visible on Desmond's arm, now. It's hard to see the glow under sunlight, but he can tell the lines. He can see – there's more of them. There's actual script, forming into near legible symbols, under Desmond's skin.

So, they made a moldable bit of reality _somewhere,_ maybe on Earth, maybe not, and Desmond is… changing, possibly on a very fundamental level.

"I fucked this up, didn't I," Clay mutters, picking a fish bone from between his teeth and making a face. He poked at a gum and that's not a feeling he remembered or particularly enjoyed.

"We're still around, I call that a plus," Desmond says. "Whatever this is and wherever we are aside… we're still _here_. I call that a win."

"And if we're _stuck_ here for the rest of our existence?"

"Hm," Desmond answers, chewing on a bit of fish thoughtfully and then swallowing. "Then we might as well make the most of it. You can make stuff – copy stuff. Does it, like… wear you out or anything, does it take energy or whatever?"

"Not that I noticed. It's just… an executable command," Clay mutters. "Doesn't feel like anything."

Except maybe it does. He can feel the Island under his skin, a bit – like it's part of him. Or like he's part of it. Apples of the same Tree.

"Then," Desmond says. "Could you make us materials for building? Like, say, a house?"

"You want to build a house?" Clay asks wryly.

Desmond shrugs and then nods towards the horizon, where in the distance a line of darker clouds is slowly rising. "Might rain," he comments and picks another bit of fish. "Would be nice to stay dry, you know. If we collected rain water, could you copy that like you do the stone? Or does it have to come from the Island?"

Clay blinks and then peers at the horizon. "Might be that there is a fundamental difference in the island's base structure, I don't know," he says. "Depends on where we are, I guess – if this is the Grey, or some aspect of it, then I probably can – but if this is Earth and that is… home-grown reality-based water…"

"Won't know until you try?" Desmond asks.

"Hm," Clay agrees, considering. "Right. Let's build a water collector."

* * *

Water collector ends up being basically a sort of tub made of bricks. If there is a way to shape the stones he can make, Clay hasn't yet figured it out, so all they can really make is a pool, with dirt and grass for mortar. Hopefully it would be enough to capture water.

Later thought… "We have materials for concrete here," Clay says, considering. "I mean, if time wasn't the issue, I could maybe make a bit, and then copy and paste it and voila, building materials of Romans at our fingertips."

"Really?" Desmond asks, curious.

"We got seashells, with a bit of work that's quicklime – and there's enough loose gravel and sand here for a decent aggregate," Clay says. "If I can make it – and I _can_ – and if I can then copy and paste it with the same level of freedom as I can the stones… that's unlimited building materials, right there. No use to us in the immediate time, because concrete takes time to set, but, if you really want a house… that's a thing to do."

"That is _awesome_ ," Desmond says, looking at him. "Let's do that, later."

"Mm," Clay agrees and then shifts his footing. "It'll only work if I can copy quicklime. Can't do anything to the plants, so I might not be able to," he says. "I can't copy plants either, tried that too. Nothing happened."

Desmond hums. "So, non… living things, maybe?"

Clay shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. "Couldn't copy a dead fish either."

"Well. We'll try and see what you can and can't do, and won't stress over it until then," Desmond says. "Just being able to copy the rocks is _awesome_. With just them we can build a house, even if you can't make concrete. That's like… survival almost guaranteed, right there."

"Yeah. Should try enlarging them next, see what that will do."

Desmond grins at him and then they sit down to wait for the rain to start, sitting with their backs to the original portal to Istanbul, where the frame of the portal forms a sort of shelter. Clay pulls his knees to his chest and watches Desmond toe off his sneakers so that he can rub at his ankles.

"Your bones are hurting," Clay comments.

"I noticed that, yeah," Desmond agrees, looking up at the sky and not at him.

"I think they're changing."

Desmond says nothing to that, so, apparently it's one of those places they're not going to. Okay then. "I might be able to copy our clothes," Clay comments. "Should do that before we ruin them."

"Absolutely. Underwear especially," Desmond agrees. "Socks, shoes. Oh, and my things – get you a set of weapons and stuff."

"Nice," Clay says. "Thanks."

Desmond nods. "You know, even if you can't copy water, I think we might be alright. We can make a big rain collector, build a tank… if it rains often enough, that's water set."

Clay nods, leaning his chin to his knees. "We could probably make a thing for distilling salt," he says. "Collect salt water for evaporation. That'll take the edge off cooking, even if we can't figure out wood for fire and whatnot. And that's a bit of seasoning too, which would be nice."

"Yeah, that'd be cool," Desmond agrees. "There's fertile soil here, we could make like… a garden, for what plants we have, so that we can try and get more of them. Might not be edible, I don't know, but anything is better than nothing."

"Yeah."

"Then maybe a little stone pier, for easier fishing…" Desmond trails off, smiling even while rubbing at his knees with their _mutating bones_ like he doesn't even care that he's in pain. "I think we can make this place pretty nice. And, I mean, the weather's been nice. It's not so bad. Build a little pavilion to keep away from the rain and I bet even that's nice."

For a while they go back and forth about all the things they could make, just with Clay's ability to make basic building materials. A lot of is make-believe – no way they would actually do most of it, it's entirely too much work, and being able to copy rocks doesn't mean building structures. It would have to be done by hand – and maybe they'd make a shelter, maybe, out of necessity. But Clay very much doubts they'd bother with a damn pavilion. If they even lived long enough to try.

It's a nice picture Desmond's painting, though. Comforting.

Eventually the rain clouds roll over them. Their little shelter under the portal frame isn't much of a shelter, really, but it keeps them mostly warm once the rain starts – or it does, until they both leave it to check the water collector. Water is pooling over the rocks there, slowly, but there's enough of it to be called a puddle, anyway.

Clay dibs his fingers into it and thinks, a little desperately, _Copy. Paste. Come on, you bastard, Multiply!_

It's like his hands become a water fountain – water just rushes out of them, bursting forward like from a faucet, splashing to the sides of the little pool and soon filling it – soon, spilling over it. Beside him, Desmond lets out an incredulous laugh, and then dips both hands in it, and lifts them to his mouth, drinking without care.

"It's good," he says. "It's fresh."

"Probably full of god knows what bacteria," Clay says, grinning helplessly, elbow deep in water now.

"So you can copy microorganisms, but not trees?" Desmond asks him, grinning. "You suck, Sixteen."

"Shut up, Seventeen," Clay says, leaning in and dipping his whole head into the water.

They both get sopping wet, and it's a miserable night afterwards, cold and eventually muddy, but who cares. They have water. They have food. They have an oven and the future of building things.

Life is looking up, apparently.

* * *

The next day, Desmond starts limping, wincing on every step, rubbing at the side of his hip to try and ease an ache that goes nowhere. And there is nothing Clay can do about it, nothing his stupid copy paste powers can do to make it better.

"Okay, I am starting to feel a bit like an asshole here," Clay says, awkwardly, watching him. "I got fucking magic powers, and you got… this. Seems a bit unfair."

"Yeah, well," Desmond says, sitting down and stretching out his legs. It doesn't seem to help, but at least he's not walking around limping anymore. "I don't suppose your magic powers might include healing me?" he asks wryly.

Clay hesitates. "Well, I could try… to repair object, or something," he offers. "Could be dangerous though."

Desmond hesitates and then sighs. "Yeah, maybe last resort," he says and leans back, sighing with discomfort. "Good news is, I got no unusual bumps or anything, and my muscles _feel_ like they're the normal shape. So whatever it is, I don't have like… instant cancer. That's a good sign, maybe."

"The fact that all your bones hurt is generally considered a bad sign," Clay says weakly.

"No all of them. Just – most of them," Desmond sighs and closes his eyes. "I want a – wait a minute," he says and sits up suddenly with a grunt. "There actually might be something you can do. My backpack, where is it?"

Clay jumps up. "Think we left it by the oven – I'll go get it."

"Just the medkit," Desmond calls after him. "There's some general meds in it – think you can copy those?"

"I will damn well try!" Clay answers and hurries to get the thing, digging through it quickly for the medkit. It's a decent-sized one – and equipped for a working Assassin, which means it has some heavy duty medicine along with the general ones. It has actual morphine, even.

Clay takes it back to Desmond, and Desmond points to the paracetamol – made by Abstergo, because their lives aren't ironic enough. "I think that'll be good enough for a start – try that one."

"Right," Clay says, taking out the sheet of pills and holding it in hand. _Copy and Paste,_ he thinks, staring intently at the thing and willing the object to be multiplied.

They both let out a sigh of immense relief when another sheet pops up to join the first one, and ten pills become twenty

"Should probably make more of these," Clay says, handing Desmond one of the sheets. "And copy everything else too. Is there any antibiotics in this kit of yours?"

"Shaun retrofitted it, so, probably. He had some doubts about my general survival instincts, the prick," Desmond says, popping out a couple of the paracetamols and taking them dry. "Copy everything – copy the whole backpack if you can. Make backups."

"Best-by-date might become issue one day," Clay comments, while quickly checking the kit over for everything essential.

"Better to have old meds than no meds," Desmond says and sighs, leaning back. "Now please be good medicine and _work_..."

Probably a testament to how much pain Desmond is actually in, that he's actually letting it show this much. Clay winces and then works on doubling their stores, while they wait to see if they have to bring out the big guns.

"Paracetamol is made from, like, willow, isn't it?" Desmond asks, eyes shut. "How come you can copy that?"

"It isn't – you're thinking of aspirin. And even aspirin wasn't ever really made of willow. Most meds are made of synthetic equivalents to real natural substances," Clay says, reaching for the paracetamol packet and glancing over the back. "It's just… synthetic chemicals, mostly. N-acetyl-para-aminophenol in this case."

"I have no idea what that means."

"It's literally the formula of the thing. That's that Assassin upbringing for you," Clay mutters. "Born Assassins get barely high school equivalent education, I've noticed."

Desmond points a finger at him. "Rude. I've lived the lives of two Assassins Brotherhood Mentors. Have some respect."

"Doesn't mean you know shit about chemistry," Clay says, looking at it. "Is it at least _working_ on you?"

Desmond snorts and rubs at his forehead. "Just don't ask me to understand it, and yeah. I think it is. Thank god."

Clay hums. So, whatever it is, analgesics work on it. Which means it's a physical thing that's still working within the limitations of Desmond's own body, nervous system and all. That's… he has no idea if it's bad or good, but it's something anyway.

"If I did this to you, I'm sorry," Clay says quietly.

"We're still alive," Desmond says, sighing. "Don't be."


	3. Chapter 3

Swimming helps with the persistent ache along his limbs, so that's what Desmond does. And that is how he almost ends up being brained by a bit of driftwood – a long, waterlogged… log, which is slowly drifting towards the Animus Island, bobbing along the waves.

"So," he says, after the thing has been hauled off onto shore and he and Clay have spent some time inspecting it. "What does this say about reality?"

"What am I, a seer?" Clay asks. "You want me to scry a log?"

"You know, all evidence kind of points the way of you being a magician, _and_ you predicted a lot of the future," Desmond points out while stretching his shoulders. "So, yeah. Kinda."

Clay snorts at him, crouching down beside the log. "Well," he says. "It's been carved – you can see tool marks. And here – this was drilled, with a hand drill," he points to a hole that runs through the log. "I think this was either part of a ship, or part of a pier."

"So, a bit of reality and not, like… a random Animus asset?" Desmond asks, eyeing the log. It's about eight feet long and overall probably not going to be much use to them – but it's wood. They don't have much in the way of wood here, so, it's… probably better than nothing.

Clay says nothing for a moment, resting his arms on his folded knees and humming. "Yeah," he says then and reaches forward in that _I can't believe I am doing this, but let's do magic_ way he does his thing with. "Maybe."

Clay lays his hand on the log and Desmond waits for a moment. Nothing happens, ultimately – the log is neither multiplied or modified.

"I think it's living things, or things which were living once. I can't change things that have been… grown," Clay says with a sigh. "Can't multiply it."

"That's a weird restriction," Desmond comments. "But okay, if you can't, you can't. Not your fault."

Clay shakes his head and stands up. "I did figure out something I can do to them, though," he says. "Though I'm not sure if it's actually _modifying them_ as much as it is modifying the... general area they are in."

"Er, okay? What?"

Clay reaches for the log and then pulls his hand to the right sharply – and in front of their eyes, the waterlogged wood dries. It's like it's been put into a big drier – moisture just… evaporates.

"Okay," Desmond says. "You can heat it up?"

"No," Clay says, sounding utterly done with the whole thing. "I can _fast forward_."

Desmond eyes him dubiously. "Fast forward. You can control time."

"No. Well. Maybe," Clay says and makes a face. "I don't know. I have no idea – but it works on plants. Also," he takes out a piece of angular rock from his pocket and throws it up. Then, snapping his fingers, he stills it in the air. " _Pause_ ," he says, sounding disgusted, as the stone just hangs in the air. "Aaand _slow_." The stone begins slowly sinking down, in slow motion.

"You goddamn wizard," Desmond says, watching the stone slowly tumble end over end as it drifts down. "I am getting seriously jealous here."

"Yeah. It would be absolutely lovely if it made _any goddamn sense,_ " Clay mutters. "Fucking hate this shit, it's not _logical_ , it doesn't follow the laws of gravity or thermodynamics or – or anything. I can do fucking magic, and I know it's probably because being part of the code genetics of the island made me and it entangled on some weird quantum calculation level, but god fucking damn it. Not doing wonders for my sense of what's real."

The stone drops with a slowed down noise into the sand beside the log.

Desmond looks at Clay warily. "Okay, then… if it's not doing good for your mind, maybe stop doing it."

"It won't matter at this point – I already know I can do it," Clay mutters and rubs a hand over his face. "Besides, we have a house to build, right?"

Desmond looks towards to the foundations they've been making – Clay has been making, mostly. They decided to build the house near the middle part of the island, leaving space to walk around and stuff. Clay's been plotting and laying out the foundations, but he has something of a patience problem and gets easily distracted – so it's slow going. And he's not been letting Desmond help on the count of the muscle and bone pain.

It looks good though. Clay's got enough of an architect in him to make it pretty nice – he'd even figured out a sort of sewer system for it. Or at least a drain, which would push waste water out of the house, eventually, granted that they figured out a way to get water flowing into the house. Small steps.

"We're not in so much of a hurry that you can't sort stuff through in your head," Desmond says. "As much as you can anyway. I mean – the fate of the world isn't on the balance anyway. You can take a break."

Clay lets out a hysterical little giggle at that and smothers his face in his hands. "Fuck, if only," he says and looks up. "I don't know how you can just shrug your shoulders and move on – this shit sticks with me, I can't just _stop_. I have to do something – and you don't know the fate of the world doesn't hang in balance! It might! We don't know, we don't know anything!"

"We know something," Desmond says, wary. "For example, I know that _that_ ," he motions to one of the many blue-flowered bushes all around the island, "is edible."

"What?" Clay asks, turning around and frowning. He eyes the bushes and then looks up at him. " _What_? Did you eat some, you moron? You know those were designed for the Animus, they're probably not even _real plants_."

"I think they're lavender," Desmond says and shrugs. "Tastes like lavender."

"… what?" Clay asks incredulously and then looks at the bush again. "Isn't that like a flower?"

"Well, yes. Duh. Also a spice," Desmond says and walks over to the bushes, crouching down to pick a few sprigs. "Also those bushes up by the partition portals? I think one of them might be a young olive. Not sure about the other ones, the flowers aren't right."

"Olive," Clay repeats and Desmond can hear his scowl. It just gets worse when Desmond plucks a few sprigs off the flower and hands them over. "I am not eating that."

"Just smell it," Desmond says imploringly. "Though seriously, I did eat some and it was fine. I'm thinking we could use it as a seasoning – you know, for the fish. And general deterrent for scurvy."

"Scurvy," Clay repeats dubiously and accepts the flower. The faces he makes while smelling it are kind of hilarious – he goes from annoyed and dubious to begrudgingly interested, and then his frown takes on a sort of… frustratedly sad look.

"What?" Desmond asks, smelling the sprigs still in his hand.

"I just… I don't think I've ever smelt flowers before," Clay mutters, annoyed and embarrassed, and looks at the blue flowers. "I don't even know what this is supposed to smell like. Is it nice? I have no idea."

Desmond carefully keeps how fucking sad that is from his face. "It's pretty nice," he says. "Got a sort of bitter-ish woodsy taste. Bit minty."

"What are you, a food critic?"

"Just sick of plain fish," Desmond answers and shrugs. "And also a little excited about having even a single edible plant. Also In Ezio's time, in Italy – there were like… olive farms – people had olive trees in rows and stuff, and there was usually lavender growing underneath them. And, I think other stuff too, sage and maybe oregano? Can't remember, but it was like… a thing. Would be cool if we had some on the island."

"Your obsession with Ezio Auditore's life is absurd," Clay says, eyeing him. "You remember what the _gardens_ were like?"

"I liked the gardens. I was stuck in what was pretty much a _cave_ while living his memories, excuse me for pretending to walk around the park taking in the fresh air every now and then," Desmond mutters. "Italy had beautiful gardens. The closest thing I saw in real life was Central Park, and it's not the same."

"Got none of that authentic Italian rustic culture?"

"Fine, sue me for liking things," Desmond rolls his eyes. "Anyway, I think it's lavender. Not so sure about the other plants – the grass is probably just grass, but if I'm right about the olive tree, then, hey, we have an olive tree! And also, if you can like… fast forward it, maybe we'll have olives sooner rather than later, that would be awesome."

"Olives are disgusting," Clay says angrily. "As, you know, edible things, unless you pickle them and salt them and fucking _cure_ them, they're just… awful."

Desmond sighs. "They're potential food, and all we got so far is _fish_. You're in a mood, what's gotten to you?"

Clay scowls and looks away, spinning the sprig of lavender by the stem. Then he lowers the flower, shaking his head. "What if what I'm doing is the reason you're hurting?"

"What?"

"You're standing crooked, Desmond," Clay says, accusingly. "You're fucking _lopsided_ , have you noticed?"

Desmond had, actually. He'd just been trying to ignore it.

"What if what I'm doing, the whole – fucking – editing stuff," Clay says, throwing the lavender angrily in the direction of the foundations. "What if it's using you up somehow, what if it comes from inside you, what if I'm – fuck, I don't even know. Using up your atoms for energy. You're obviously losing mass in your _bones_ , what if –"

"Clay," Desmond says, letting out a huff, not sure if to be touched or amused or sad. "I'm not losing mass."

"One of your legs is shorter than the other now!" Clay accuses him. "Obviously you're losing _something_ there –"

"No – that's not – come here," Desmond says, stepping closer. "Look – I'm not losing mass."

Clay scowls at him, glancing pointedly at his legs – at his uneven gait and then up at him. Then, blinking, he does a double take.

Desmond arches his brows and looks down and then up again, standing up to his full height, as straight as he can with his body being a bit uneven currently. He even goes out as far as to spread out his arms – both of them lined with golden markings now.

It doesn't take long for Clay to get it.

"You're… taller," the guy says flatly.

"Yep," Desmond agrees with a sigh. "Almost by an inch, already."

Clay steps back to look at him more closely. "Fuck," he says. "You're growing bigger. Growing pains – that's what it is, _growing pains_?" he demands. "The hell is –" he trails off, looking him up and down and then letting out an incredulous noise. "You're becoming an – "

"Don't," Desmond says, frowning a little. "I'm not."

"You really are though! The genes, the markings, now this? They were like full fifty centimeters taller than normal people, you know – normal human people. You're growing _bigger,_ Desmond, and you're not exactly a short guy to begin with, and you're what, twenty five? No way is this just a normal growth spurt –"

"The point is," Desmond says, loud enough to cut over the babble. "You doing your magic thing has nothing to do with my thing. Okay? You're not causing it."

"I absolutely am, I definitely _did_ ," Clay says, looking somewhere between horrified and morbidly fascinated. "I triggered an error in your code – a mutation in your DNA, set forth a process – this is definitely happening because of what I did –"

"Clay," Desmond says, first intending to refute it, saying that he started having flashes of writing on his skin way before even seeing the Eye, but… they started after the Synch Nexus thing with Clay, when he got out of his coma. At which point his DNA was already modified. So… "Yeah, okay, maybe," he admits, at which Clay makes a wounded little noise. "But the point is, magic and my bones growing bigger, it's not fundamentally interlinked, okay? You doing magic is not making this worse."

"Are we really going to call it magic now?" Clay asks desperately.

"You started it," Desmond says, looking at him. "And it's not your fault."

"It's absolutely my fault –"

" _Sixteen_."

The blond man falls silent for a moment, tugging at his fingers and eyeing him with a mixture of wariness and wonder. "You're becoming an Isu," he blurts then and snorts out a horrified laughter. "Oh my god, you're becoming one of _them_."

Desmond sighs. "Just," he starts to say and then shakes his head. "Come with me and see if you can fast forward the olive tree into producing actual olives, okay?"

Clay giggles, a little deranged. "Yeah, okay. But I am not going to eat them unless they're on a pizza."

"You are going to eat them and you're going to like it," Desmond says, and pretends not to notice Clay's staring as he limps his way up to the partition portals and to the maybe-olive tree up there.

* * *

"It makes sense, sort of," Clay says later, while they're sitting by the oven, eating that day's catch of fish. It has more salt now – though the process of distilling salt is far from perfect, they managed to produce good enough brine, and salted fish definitely beats unsalted fish.

"What does?" Desmond asks, picking bones out of his share.

"The trees, the plants. They're early Animus assets, from when they were designing Italy for Ezio's memories – that was always a priority, getting into the head of the Prophet," Clay explains. "It failed with me, because Ezio and me went together like oil and water – but anyway, it was an early project, building up the Italian environment. If you saw gardens in the Animus, chances are they were encoded by Abstergo, and what we have on the island are Abstergo assets. So… they're probably the same plants you saw in the Animus."

"Things were re-used here?" Desmond asks curiously.

"Animus Island came first, it was the prototype – but Abstergo is nothing but efficient in its use of assets. Why make stuff, even early on, which you can't use for something else in later simulations?" Clay asks and shrugs. "I guess we're lucky they decided modelling practical food plants was more important for authenticity first, rather than, I don't know. Cypress trees."

"So, chances are, the other bushes here might be useful too?" Desmond asks. "You should fast forward them too. Could get something useful out of them."

"Yeah," Clay agrees, considering his fish. "Maybe I should fast forward you – get you through your growing pains."

"Don't you dare. I'll end up with muscle tears or something," Desmond says, rubbing at his calf. It's on the verge of a muscle cramp, again. "You know what I would like? A hot tub."

"Is that a hint?" Clay asks wryly.

Desmond smiles at him sweetly. "You could do it, right?"

"We still don't have a good source of heat, you know," Clay says. "One piece of driftwood does not a storage of firewood make. Still can't copy wood."

"But you can _grow it_ ," Desmond says. "And we have _olives_ now, which means we can grow more olive trees. So we could have more wood, right?"

"With an asterisk." Clay mutters. "Almost killed your precious olive tree, remember? And it grew all crooked."

"That's just olive trees for you, they all grow weird," Desmond says with a shrug. "It was alright, once we figured out the water thing. So, we just set up proper irrigation, you do your water thing, the fast forward, and voila, more firewood!"

"I'm noticing a trend of me doing everything here," Clay hums, picking at his fish. "You know… instead of using it to get cushy, we could just… make a raft and try to get out of here."

Desmond hesitates at that, glancing at him.

"Driftwood implies there's more out there. We're _somewhere_ with _some people_ who have tools and work on wood," Clay says quietly, casting him a sideways glance. "We could… get out of here."

"Not knowing where we are and how far land is?" Desmond asks, humming.

"I can copy water, you can fish, if we make a good enough raft… we could do it," Clay says. "We have the means."

Desmond says nothing, eating couple more bits of fish before brushing his hands clean. "You have the means," he says then and rolls his feet by the ankles, trying to ease the strain. "I'm kind of… dead weight here."

"You're turning into a _god_."

"You know better than I do that they weren't gods. Just. Assholes, mostly," Desmond mutters, wincing. His toes are starting to hurt where the toenails are constantly pressing against his shoes. With a sigh, he reaches to tug his shoes off. His feet have grown longer too – not by much, yet, but enough that soon he won't be able to wear shoes anymore. "They just had tech and shit."

"And powers," Clay comments, looking at him. "Eagle Sense comes from them, remember?"

"Well, I already had that," Desmond sighs. "At this point you're more of a god than they were, with your reality editing powers. I'm just… growing taller. Very godly, that, growing out of your clothes."

Clay makes a hissing noise at that and says nothing for a moment, while Desmond pulls his knees up to his chest and hugs his legs loosely. "We don't actually know all that much about them," Clay comments. "But they were more intelligent, definitely. Lived longer, healthier lives. I wouldn't put it past them to have other psychic powers. Maybe you'll learn telekinesis?"

"How useful. Most of what they did was by tech, though," Desmond says. "It was the Pieces of Eden that levitated things."

"Yeah, well, humans can pick stuff up, but we still developed robots to pick stuff up for us. Maybe Isu did the same, just with levitation," Clay offers, trying for comforting.

Desmond casts him a look and smiles, a little. "You know, I don't actually _want_ magical powers here?" he asks. "I was fine being a regular old human. You don't need to feel guilty about having reality editing powers – I'm not actually feeling left out. You can keep them."

Clay shifts where he sits and then shakes his head, looking up at the sky. "It just feels unfair," he says. "It doesn't even make sense. You're the special one, you're turning into a fucking Precursor – why did I get these powers? It should've been you."

Desmond arches a brow. "I don't think it was by design, Clay," he says. "Sometimes shit just happens."

"That, coming from you, the Chosen One of a seventy five thousand year old plan to save the world? That is hilarious," Clay says and looks at him. "Everything in your life was designed. You are the poster boy of the fated and destined."

"Ugh, don't," Desmond says. "They saw me through time and decided, _this guy is it_ – fate or destiny had nothing to do with it. It was just… people, making choices, making stuff up. The only reason they used words like destiny and prophecy and prophet is because they thought humans were too primitive to understand _we planned this for a really long time and manipulated everything to get it done_. No cosmic divine powers required."

Clay makes a face. "How am I on the wrong side of that argument?" he mutters. "I mean. Yes. _Obviously_."

Desmond shrugs. "Therefore, there's nothing _unfair_ about it," he says. "Shit happens."

Clay is quiet for a moment before snorting quietly. "Still, weird coming from _you_."

"Shut up. Make me another olive tree."

"Yes, o lord," Clay says and stands up. "All is as my God wills it."

Desmond throws a piece of fish at him.

* * *

Fifty centimetres. That's, what, twenty inches? He'd be seven, eight feet tall by the time this whole thing was through. If it would be through then – if it stopped. From how it feels like, maybe he's just going to keep on mutating forever, select bones growing longer and longer until he became this misshapen gangly thing, all lopsided and askew and –

And Desmond is not thinking about it. Clay is obviously thinking about it more than he is, casting him wary glances and almost asking about it all the time, and then stopping himself. Desmond can see what he wants to ask, though – he can almost feel it.

_Do you feel different, you know… mentally?_

And the thing is, he does, and that's harder to ignore than the aching bones and straining muscles and sinews, trying to keep up with the changes of general structure of his body. He does feel different inside his head – not worse or better, not… not angrier or calmer. His emotions and his _mind_ as a like… construct of thoughts, that seems to stay the same.

But there's, somehow… more there. Like he can think more. Not like he's smarter or faster or… or maybe he is, but just generally, he thinks _more_.

He's starting to keep up with Clay more, when they talk. He can understand the whole building process better, their house with its foundations, he's starting to get why Clay is doing things the way he does. And he's starting to have _ideas_ about why Clay's powers work, and how they work.

It probably more about structure than anything. Water is all the same stuff, in its pure form – it's just water. Replicating its form is simple – just you… take what's there and copy it. The stones of the island are similar – inside they are probably pretty simple and uniform, because they're constructs. The Animus programmers didn't design complex, layered molecule structures, nah, and so it got translated into something simple on their real island. It's probably just the single thing, all throughout, repeated in its simplicity like the water is. Single _element_ maybe. Single molecule, in a lattice. Stones of the island are the easiest for Clay to work with because it's just simple shapes.

Trees aren't so simple, though, no living thing is. They're more than one thing repeated – they're millions and millions of shapes and forms. Cells and whatnot. Desmond doesn't have the education to put it into proper words, but it comes down to complexity – the simpler thing is, the easier it is to replicate.

Clay probably _could_ duplicate more complex shapes – if he had the power and the computation prowess.

"So, what, I got access to the video player here, not the editor?" Clay asks.

Desmond shrugs. "I have no idea. But just going by what you can and can't do… I don't know. It makes sense in my head."

"What does that make _time_?" Clay asks. "Because fast forwarding a sapling into growing into a full ass tree, that's not _simple_."

"It is when you think about it," Desmond muses. "Time is just distance, when you get down to it. Moving through time is the easiest thing to do – you don't even do it, it just happens. And you can't rewind, can you? Can't turn a full grown tree back into a sapling."

Clay makes a face. "I am still, in a sense, manipulating time, that can't be just… that can't be simpler than putting rocks together. I am breaking all the laws of physics and thermodynamics and… ugh!"

Desmond shrugs. "I think it's a perspective thing," he says. "Don't ask me to explain it better, I don't know how. It's just what I think."

Clay harrumphs, dissatisfied, and folds his arms. "What does that make me then?" he asks and casts Desmond a look. "I'm asking seriously here, though. What does your new insight tell you about me? What am I?"

Desmond looks at him and then looks down. _A chisel_ , he thinks, and looks at the island. The island is a construct and Clay is interlinked with it – has the power to change it. He's the chisel with which the island is shaped. And it feels like something the Isu would've liked – something Juno would've maybe done intentionally. A human like Clay, with these powers, would be just the thing. A _tool_ for shaping the reality.

Desmond shudders and rubs at his shoulder – soon, he wouldn't be able to wear a hoodie anymore, it's already getting tight around the shoulders. "Juno told me, towards the end, about something the Isu figured out, about humans and the Pieces of Eden," he says. "About how, if you have enough humans under the thrall of the Apple, for example, and then made them believe something… that something could become reality. I think… I think that's what you are."

"I'm… what?" Clay asks and then stops, thinking.

Desmond shrugs, looking at him. "You know how reality works," he says. "You've seen the Calculations, right? You know something about these – these powers the Isu had, the stuff they could do. And you – you were part of the Island. On, like… genetic level. So."

Clay eyes the island and then turns to look at him. "Well. Hm," he says and then looks away.

Desmond looks where he's looking – at the endless pillars of the partition portals. They're still standing upright, not budging in the wind. Something about them defies the laws of nature, the way Clay does, a bit. They're _more_ than reality, in a way.

"Isu did this shit by machinery," Clay says faintly. "And I'm part of the machinery."

"You're a man," Desmond says, looking up at him. "Human."

Clay hums and glances at him. "Like you are?"

Desmond shakes his head and sighs, looking down at his hands. His fingers are longer – the lines of gold in them are glowing, even under full sunlight. He probably has them on his face too, but there's no mirror to see, and Clay hasn't mentioned it yet, so… who knows.

"Shit," he murmurs, squeezing his hands into fists and stands up, regardless of the strain it causes. "Let's finish the house."

Clay glances towards the still unfinished structure. "I think that's avoidance," he says wryly. "My shrink would call it unhealthy and insist that we should face our issues."

"Your shrink was a greedy fucking asshat and about as effective as a box of leeches," Desmond says emphatically. "Building is constructive and gives a sense of accomplishment and organization. Will fool us into thinking we have control over our reality and all that."

Clay hums. "It's kind of hilarious that we don't, in light of everything."

"Yeah," Desmond says and claps him on the shoulder. "So, on with the self deluding. Let's forget about this and just build stuff."

Clay hesitates, standing still under his hand, barely budging as Desmond pushes at him. Desmond looks down, frowning. "What?" he asks.

"You went into my partition," Clay says. "You saw shit about me."

"Yeah. I saw some shit, yeah. You were there," Desmond says. "And you went into my partition, didn't you? You saw shit about me too. Fair's fair, right?"

"Yeah, I just… didn't realise you actually…" Clay frowns and shakes his head. "My shrink was an asshat?" he asks, sarcastic.

"An absolute fucking asshole," Desmond agrees. "And wrong on many accounts and also using you for money."

"Well, I knew _that_ ," Clay mutters and looks away.

Desmond looks at him, not sure if Clay is feeling thrown by the reminder of his previous life, or if he was really this unused to having people take his side on things. Whichever it is, it has somehow thrown the guy for a loop. After all this, all the stuff that's happening to them and around them, it's the little things that stick, huh? Like the words of a toxic psychiatrist, who didn't necessarily have your best interest in mind.

Desmond only saw the psychiatrist's notes, he didn't really hear what was actually said on those sessions, but considering that the shrink wanted to keep Clay as a patient because of money, helping Clay was probably not the goal. Still, there's no telling what the shrink might've said, what might've stuck with Clay, or what Desmond could say in return to make it better. If there's anything.

Sighing, Desmond turns Clay to him and wraps his arms around him. "We'll figure it out our way, yeah?" Desmond says. "Fuck your shrink. We're gonna be just fine."

"You are deluded," Clay says, muffled against his chest. "And oh my god, you're already so much bigger, this is _insane_."

"Yeah, so, relatively speaking, who cares what's an approved coping mechanism?" Desmond says, clasping a hand on the back of Clay's head, gripping securely. "I'm turning into a giant and you're a wizard. It's all subjective."

"You're going to have structural issues," Clay says faintly, but he's less tense now. "Most people over seven, eight feet do, human bodies aren't designed for this stuff. Your heart is gonna give out, it can't pump the blood for a _tree_."

"Asshole," Desmond says, ruffling his hair and pulling back. "Come on. Let's build stuff."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay maybe some Discomfort first but then, eventually, Nice Things? Hopefully.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for self harm and past suicide and past suicidal ideation

Clay has… concerns. Too many of them to count, most of them centred around existential crisis in one form or another, but the one that keeps popping up to the forefront is the one about Desmond. Desmond, really, is the heart of the problem here. Or maybe the heart of existence.

Desmond is a… constant in the universe. In their world, anyway, in the plan of the Isu, Desmond was the lynchpin that held the whole thing together. Even Juno, when she started fucking around with everything, did not touch Desmond until he got to the certain point. Desmond had to come out _right_ for everything to work – and of all the versions of Desmond the Isu could've gone with, they needed the specific one. The one, with not just the right genetics – but the right epigenetics too.

Humans code themselves, without knowing it. Habits, skills, experiences, they are all written in people's DNA, in genetic memories, in epigenetics. Basically installed programs in an already existing operating system – what skills you have, what languages you speak, what things you know… they all make minute changes to the software, and because the software needs to be _written_ somewhere to work at all… the hardware also changed.

In Desmond's case, it was the bartender version they wanted – they needed the unflappability, the _calm_ of a guy who'd gone through bar fights and lovers spats happening under his nose, who'd built up the instinct for guys who needed to be thrown out before they made trouble, who'd faced threats of being sued and the indignity of having drinks thrown at him, and of having half a thousand people drunkenly hit on him. It was an unconventional training for a Chosen One, maybe, but it was the one the Isu wanted – needed. They wanted the guy who would not run away, who could take all the shit they threw at him and roll with it.

Desmond with a girlfriend, with a boyfriend, with a wife or husband or kids, Desmond with _anything at all_ to fight for? That Desmond wouldn't have sat idle in Abstergo holding cell – that Desmond would've fought, and ran, and gotten himself killed. So that wasn't the Desmond they used.

It was the Desmond with Nothing in his life, with No One, and Nothing To Look Forward To.

And all their programming, all their planning, all their little manipulations and tech and everything – all of it was written around _that_ Desmond. This Desmond. The Desmond of the Zen, who takes what the world dishes out, and shrugs his shoulders, and keeps on trucking.

Now what happens when you take that Desmond and turn him into the thing that manipulated him? The manipulatee becomes the manipulator?

Well… he doesn't.

Clay's knee bounces nervously as he watches Desmond standing under the olive trees. The spot by the partition portals had turned into something of a grove for them. Desmond, by using sprigs of lavender, like some sort of a manic pixie dream hippie, has made a basket and is collecting the olives into it. He looks ridiculous, wearing a shirt with ripped seams and no sleeves, and jeans that had to be split open on the sides and stitched together with a whole swathe of fabric missing, held together by paracord and prayer. He looks indecent and ridiculous.

There are lines of glowing gold in his face. Circuitry.

Clay's part of the Island's programming, he's the editing tool for its code. Software, both of them.

Desmond, he thinks, is the hardware. Literally. There is _machinery_ inside Desmond, he has _circuitry_ and _inscriptions_ on his skin. In the darkness he looks like a sci-fi movie android, with electronics flowing through the seams. And like a processor of a desktop, Desmond doesn't seem to be doing anything – he's just there. Being a thing. A processor doesn't move, it doesn't perform tricks. All the tricks happen inside – on the power of software.

Does Desmond have transistors inside him? Clay tries not to think about it. Probably. Your regular old human transistors have a size limit – eventually, the size of atoms get in the way of how small you can make them. Isu surpassed that limit probably hundreds of thousands of years ago. Fuck only knows what machinery Pieces of Eden actually used. Magic and Bullshit, probably.

Looking down at his hands, Clay opens and closes his fingers, watching the movement of flesh and skin, the way it stretches and bunches and relaxes. He has physical form, it needs to be fed and watered, it needs to expel its refuse, it works under the constraints of human biology. But how real is it, really? Sometimes it feels like he has code flowing in his veins, not blood. If he stubs his toe, it hurts, but is it really real, or is it being simulated somewhere between Desmond and the Island and him?

If – if he… would he bleed?

Desmond has a full basket of olives now, a small mount of bright green ovals. The last few days he's been working on trying to make them edible, with various results – none of them particularly delicious. Olives, raw olives, are _disgusting_ , and neither one of them has actually any idea how olives are properly prepared for eating. Desmond thinks it's just a matter of time, Clay thinks he's wasting his time. Desmond is doing it anyway, because… _because_.

Next step would be to try and make olive oil. Clay's bets are on it ending in a disaster.

They have four plants on the island. The olive trees – they have twelve now, way more than they need, but Desmond likes them, so Clay keeps making them. They have lavender, which turns out is nice to have. Desmond has been experimenting on that too, and Clay can't refute that it does make their usual fish taste _different,_ and different is better than same. The lower half of the island is now purple with lavender, Clay might've gotten carried away with that. Then they have grass, which is mostly useless, and which Desmond doesn't want to let to take over the island and its available nice soil. And then they have sage, which refuses to grow nice, always coming out a bit dried up and weird, but also makes fish _different,_ so, whatever.

Four plants, two men, lots of rocks, water, fish.

Clay is losing his mind here.

Standing up, Clay moves away, looking towards the house. He should work on it, but these days copying rocks for it and laying them out makes him want to scratch out his nerves, it makes him so restless and itchy and frustrated. It's – it's ADHD, he thinks, in part. Repetitive boring tasks and him have never gotten along, and this is the worst. It's getting done, though, slowly – Desmond has been working on it too. They're only really missing the roof now.

Clay scratches at his arm, where Desmond now has golden circles, and shrugs to try and ease out the tension of his spine. He's tingling inside. It's probably all in his head – but what if it isn't, what if he really has code running in his veins? What if he doesn't have nerves at all, just programming. Subprograms, running on automation, triggered by external stimulus – shifted weight detected, execute program _walk_ …

 _Walking_ , Clay read somewhere sometime back when he was alive, _is calculated falling_. Stupid.

They keep their things in the house now, where they will stay clean and clear of dirt and sand. Desmond's backpack is there, along with the tools – the one Clay couldn't copy and the ones he could. Weapons, yay, weapon sheaths, nay. Paracord, nay, backpack, nay, clothing, nay. Stupid complex polymers and fibres.

The fuck does that make the medicine, though? Why could he copy medicine, but not underwear?

"Because it's all in my head," Clay mutters, walking to the stone table, where their things sit. "Or… in Desmond's head." Need overriding limitations, maybe? Or, the closer he is to Desmond and the bigger need Desmond has – like when he's in pain – the more computing power Clay will have at his disposal. Desmond, allocating RAM to his use.

They have a hoard of knives, several hidden blades. Desmond carries one knife with him in its original sheath, the others are left here. Including the hidden blade. The straps soon wouldn't fit around Desmond's arm anymore. He probably wouldn't mind if Clay made use of it. He won't, though.

Clay takes one of the knives instead, and without even thinking about it, turns it in his hand and draws a cut across his outer arm, where he knows there aren't any major veins, where he won't damage muscle – just a thin line across the skin. What he expects, a burst of numbers or glitch in the matrix, who knows.

There's just blood. It wells up from the cut immediately and then begins leaking down his arm, trickling down from it, down his wrist, staining his thumb before dripping down to the stone table. It's vividly red, gleaming wetly, and when he draws his thumb over it, it leaves smears and stains.

And it dawns on Clay what he just did.

It's… not a small wound he made. Even a _thin_ cut can go deep, and this is not a shallow wound – it's a decent-sized gash. The kind of gash you'd maybe go to hospital for, to get stitches.

"Aw, shit," Clay says, dropping the knife and clasping his hand over the cut – and then he _feels_ it. A cutting, stinging pain as he applies pressure on the wound, feeling the thing along the whole length of it. Fuck, he's an idiot. What the fuck was he thinking?

He should –

Shit.

He ends up smearing blood all over the table as he scrambles for Desmond's med kid. There was gauze there, and bandaids. He needs to stop the bleeding. Gotta bind the wound. Fuck, infection is also a thing he might have to worry about. Shit, shit, shit –

There's _Stillness_ and _Silence_ behind him, made that much more noticeable by the fact that it's concentrated around a person. "Clay?" Desmond says, his voice odd.

"It's fine – I got it under control," Clay says, stupidly, as he gets the bandage out and ends up smearing the neat little plastic packet red with blood. "I'm – I'm good, I'm just going to bind it, okay, I'm just going to –"

He can hear his blood coursing in his head, heavy and desperate, and suddenly he is going into a panic attack. It's not even for any fucking _reason_ , the wound isn't that bad, the pain, he's had worse, this is fixable, it's stupid, but it's completely fixable, he can fix this and he won't do it again and why can't he _breathe_ –?

The bandage, still in its plastic wrapping, slips from his hands, falls off the table, rolls away, and Clay hitches out a breath that sounds too loud and too stupid in his ears.

"Hey," Desmond says – he's there so fast it's startling. The bandage is in his hands. "Hey, it's okay, just calm down –"

He sounds so fucking _sad_.

"D-Des – Seventeen. I didn't – I didn't mean to, I'm not – I wasn't thinking – fuck knows what I was thinking. I'm not – I'm not like this anymore – I'm not, I don't do this –"

"Shh, shh, shh, it's okay, it's okay," Desmond says, wiping the blood on his ripped up jeans and then peels the bandage open. "Show me your arm, it's okay, come on –"

"I don't – I don't – I don't ," Clay tries to say, tries to draw breath, tries to explain, while Desmond takes his arm in his hands – fuck, they're so much bigger now – and wipes the blood with a swab from the medkit, checking the cut. Blood wells up again, but he sighs, sounding relieved.

"Did you get anything in this?" Desmond asks quietly. "Do I need to rinse and disinfect it?"

"N-no, I just – I just cut it," Clay sobs. "I didn't mean to, I really – I didn't think. Wasn't thinking. Seventeen -"

Desmond puts a clean wad of gauze on the wound, pressing on it while wrapping the bandage around Clay's arm. He's so fucking careful, his hands warm and big and lined with glowing circuitry, inhuman and gentle. Fuck – fuck – fuck….

"I'm sorry," Clay chokes. "I just – I needed to see I bleed blood."

Desmond doesn't say anything to that, just wraps the gauze expertly around the wad and then binds it with a metallic little clip that came with the gauze. Then, once he's sure the blood isn't seeping through the bandage, he looks at Clay's face.

Clay shakes his head, his breathing shuddering and too fast.

"It's okay," Desmond says, "I'm not mad."

"You're _sad_ for me, that's _worse_!" Clay gasps, the fingers of his uninjured hand grabbing at Desmond's ripped up shirt. It would have to be cut along the seams too, soon, to fit. "Fuck – it doesn't make sense, nothing makes sense, I had to – I didn't think, I just – I had to check, but I didn't think how I was doing it, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry_ –"

Desmond fucking _coos_ at him, gathers him into a tight embrace, and that's worse too. Clay can't fucking breathe and Desmond's just holding him, that's so much worse - "Breathe, Clay," Desmond says, one palm stroking up and down along his neck, wide and warm and grounding. "Breathe."

" _Can't_ – "

"Just breathe. Slowly. In and out. You can do it."

"Fuck you," Clay snarls at him and breathes.

* * *

Clay has a sort of emotional awareness blackout. He doesn't actually lose consciousness, but by the time he cares about where he is and what he's doing again, he and Desmond are sitting outside the house, Clay pretty much in Desmond's lap. It's warm. Sun is setting, the last rays bathing the front of the house. The ocean sounds calm and quiet.

"I'm not actually – I didn't want to self harm," Clay mumbles, numbly. He thinks he's cried. He can't remember – but this emotional whiteout feels like the aftermath of a nice good wretched _wailing_. "I didn't want to hurt myself."

Desmond hums, stroking one hand up and down his arm.

"I didn't think," Clay says. "I really didn't, I just… it felt like I had numbers in my veins." Which, in hindsight, is actually kind of worse. Crazy person, cutting their wrists open to get the bugs out and all that. Shit. "I'm sorry."

Desmond is still not saying anything – and it would almost be better if he was judgemental, or sad, or disappointed, or _anything_. But there's nothing coming from him. Clay looks up, wanting to see his expression, and Desmond looks down at him – and there's nothing.

"Fucking _say_ something," Clay snaps. "Tell me I'm being an idiot, ask me why, tell me not to do it again, something – this ain't helping."

Desmond blinks and sighs. "I want to tell you not to do it again," he says. "But I don't want to order you. You told me why, so – I'm trying to understand. Trying to think how to help."

Clay swallows, looking away. "You can't help me not be an idiot in the past, it already happened," he mutters. "And I'm not going to do it again. It was stupid, I get that. I'm not going to try again."

"Try?" Desmond asks quietly. "What were you _trying_?"

Clay draws a breath, frustrated, and then sighs, lying back down, his head against Desmond's chest. "To make sense of this," he mutters. "Sometimes it doesn't feel real, Desmond. Not real enough."

Seventeen doesn't seem to know what to say to that – he just sighs and wraps his stupid too big arms around Clay, loosely clasping them over his side. "Okay," he says. "Sometimes it doesn't. But why does it have to be?"

"What?" Clay mumbles.

"It's pretty real. We can feel things, eat things, grow things, mess up, we can get cold and wet and warm and dry… we can be hurt," Desmond says quietly. "How much more real does it have to be, to be alright for you? At what point is it real enough that you don't have to _check_?"

Clay blinks, staring up at the darkening evening sky and then tilting his head, realising he has no idea. How real would it have to be? "I don't like being able to edit the Island," he admits then. "It's handy, but it's fucking with my mind. It's too easy, and it doesn't make sense, and there are no clearly defined rules."

"Okay," Desmond says, agreeable. "Then stop doing it."

Fuck, if only it was that simple. "But I can still do it," Clay says and looks at him. "I know I can – it's always there. I can _feel_ the Island. We're cut from the same cloth, me and it. It's like… it's always there. I always know. It's not quite… real."

Desmond sighs, chest rising and falling under Clay's back. "I'm sorry. If I could do something about it, I would," he says, running his hand over Clay's arm, the uninjured one.

Clay laughs, high and reedy even to his own ears. "Fuck," he says and closes his eyes. "Fuck everything."

They're quiet for a while, as the sky grows darker, Desmond holding him loosely while the air grows cooler. It's nice and real, and then Desmond is glowing and it's weird again.

"We're a piece of Eden," Clay murmurs. "A chunk ripped right off the edge of the paradise. You, me, the Island – we're the outskirts of Eden, dropped in the middle of nowhere. And the paradise is lost, and all there is left are the ruins."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees. "But why can't we make it our own paradise?"

"Because we know better?" Clay hums and closes his eyes.

"Why? Why is that better?" Seventeen demands, and for the first time he sounds actually a little annoyed. "Fuck, I _hate_ that. Don't do the thing you want to do, don't try to get enjoyment out of little things in life, don't try to be, or have, or enjoy what you want, because you know better. Grow up and embrace the cynicism. Life sucks, so act like it and fucking settle for unhappiness. _Why_? Why the fuck is that _better_ than trying to enjoy what you fucking have, or trying to make things better? Who the hell decided that being miserable is more realistic than trying to be happy?"

Clay blinks his eyes open and looks up at him. Desmond is flushed with anger. "Um. A little bit of… suppressed emotion there, Seventeen," Clay comments.

"You know why I ran away from the Farm?" Desmond asks, tight.

"Because Bill Miles is an abusive dad?" That's the impression Clay got, from Desmond's partition. There were other reasons, teenage rebellion and dissatisfaction, Desmond's lack of faith in what he was taught… but mostly it was just the general abuse.

"Well, yes," Desmond agrees. "But mostly it was because I was fucking miserable, and I could see, I would _always_ be miserable. Should I have stayed and became an Assassin like dad wanted? Maybe that would've been better, for the war and all, maybe I would've been a good one. But I would have _hated_ my life. I almost started hating my life again, the moment I met Dad again. There's this invasive _despair_ to being an Assassin, the way he runs things. Almost fell to it again."

Clay thinks of himself, thinks of Lucy, thinks of Desmond, and hums.

"I don't _want_ to be miserable," Seventeen says, looking away. "I want to enjoy life, however it comes along. Even if it's under a fucking mountain in a cave stuck in the Animus – or stuck on a half-real island where I'm turning into a goddamn alien – _fuck_ …" he leans his head back and then lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes. "I don't want to _know better_. This could be paradise, we could make it that way. The fuck says it can't be done?"

Desmond falls silent there, swallowing and still flushed with anger, it's – a weirdly effective look on him. And Clay gets where Desmond is coming from.

But Desmond is _well-adjusted_. Who knows where that actually puts him on the spinning sliding spiral scale of mental health, but he's _well-adjusted_ anyway.

"I have OCD and ADHD," Clay says. "And I killed myself. So, suicidal ideation happened. I'm probably still depressed."

Desmond winces under him a little. "Yeah," he says, quietly. "Sorry."

"Just – saying it's not that easy for me."

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Stop it. I'm not trying to compare pains here, or make you feel guilty. What I'm saying is…" Clay trails away and then turns a little, so that he's lying on his side more than on his back, and can actually see Desmond's face at a better angle. "It's hard for me. My brain can't settle into this so easily. I know – I want things to be better. But it's hard. I can't just choose to ignore this shit – it doesn't go away."

Desmond looks at him and then looks away – guilty and a little sad, but thinking. "And being able to edit things doesn't help," he says.

Clay relaxes against him, sighing. "No, it fucking doesn't. Makes everything feel not real. Makes me feel like I'm a thing, and not… not…"

Not human.

Desmond nods, thinking, his hand stroking absently up and down along Clay's back. He's already freaking massive, the tallest guy Clay has ever met, and he's still growing – no longer quite as lopsidedly, thankfully, the guy can walk straight again, but he's still growing. How big would his hands be once finished?

Here Clay is, freaking out about superpowers, while Desmond is turning into a member of a whole different species.

"Do you think we could… I don't know, with a Piece of Eden or something, take your power away?" Desmond asks quietly.

Clay blinks and then lifts his head. "You'd. Do that?"

"If that's what you want," Desmond shrugs.

"But it's so useful," Clay says, confused. "I can make copies of things. The trees, the house, the building in general, shit, you wanted a pier and everything, I haven't even started on making the stones for it –"

"Clay," Desmond says. "If you don't want it, if it's fucking you over, then we try and fix it."

"But – didn't you just gave a whole spiel about being happy with what you got and shit – "

"No, about being happy in general and not settling on miserable – it's totally the opposite thing," Desmond says and slaps him lightly across the back of the head. "If I was all about being happy with what you got, _and shit_ , I would've stayed at the Farm and, I don't know. Gone off the rails probably," he says and shrugs. "If there's something you can fix, and fixing it will make shit better, then… let's fix it."

"And… if it can't be fixed, at all?" Clay murmurs.

Desmond leans his head back and sighs. "Then we try to figure how to live with it, and be happy regardless."

Clay scowls, looking away, at the still unfinished house, at the island. The trees he'd made, the olives, the lavender. All that happened because his stupid reality-altering magic. Giving it up would… Desmond really would? If he wanted, just like that? Just throw the most useful thing away, without a second thought, just because it made Clay a bit antsy?

Clay sits up slowly, leaning one hand on Desmond's chest, and looks around. He's… kind of been avoiding it, as much as he could. Yeah, he'd made the trees, the plants, copied a whole bunch of stone, but… he'd shied away from thinking about it. Everything was Desmond's project – aside from the oven, which they still use. The house, the trees, everything, was because Desmond wanted it. Hell, even the oven was because Clay thought Desmond could use it to cook.

Clay hadn't really even thought of making anything for himself, now that he thinks about it.

Desmond's looking a bit awkward, like he's not sure what to do with his hand. He's folding his arms, almost clumsy with how damn big they are, when Clay turns his eyes to him.

"I – don't know," Clay says, staring at him.

"Hm?" Desmond asks, clearing his throat and tucking his hands into his armpits, looking all attentive and obliging. "Don't know what?"

"I don't know if I actually want to get rid of it," Clay says quietly, frowning. "I haven't even done much with it yet, and there are inconsistencies, I haven't figured them out, and…" and he's been too much of a chicken shit to really actually try. He's been concentrating on how much the thing freaks him out, and less on what he can actually do. He hasn't even tried if he could, like, transform objects, change their sizes – he's got a sort of editing tool thing going on, so, maybe he could skew things? He hasn't dared to test it, because – what if he could? How freaky would that be? What would it say about reality?

But, what if he could – what could he actually _do_ with it? What could he _make_?

Desmond eyes him consideringly and then says, "So, it messes you up mentally, but you don't want to get rid of it?"

Clay makes a face. "Healthy as fuck, huh?"

"Well. Being human is weird, and we do shit that's not so healthy," Desmond says and shrugs. "People smoke and drink and do drugs. What's a little superpower compared to that? At least this thing won't give you cancer."

Clay blinks at that and then looks at him. "You equate me having magical powers to smoking?" he asks with disbelief.

Desmond shrugs. "I have no idea. Whatever you want – we'll figure it out. Figure out a way for you to, I don't know. Come to terms with being a wizard? Whatever you need," he shakes his head and then shifts where's he's sitting. "You wanna get off me maybe?"

Clay looks down. He's sitting in Desmond's lap, straddling him. Oh. Right. "I don't know, it's kind of nice," he blurts. "And you started it."

Desmond goes red again – and it's a much nicer look on him when it's not because of anger and frustration. Makes the amber glow of his eyes actually look nice, instead of mildly freaky. "Well," he says, embarrassed. "Okay then."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice Things are like a goal. The Ideal we strive for.
> 
> Also changed relationship tags, yadda yadda, it's pretty much given it's gonna be Desmond/Clay, why pretend otherwise.


	5. Chapter 5

Desmond sits back for a couple of days, working on figuring out how to make olive oil – crushing and just squeezing them seems to do something right – while Clay works through his… whatever. The house still sits unfinished while Clay makes things. They have stone benches made of numerous small blocks of stone put together and _combined_ , a table that goes with them, a couple of stone divans, probably for the hell of it, a sort of porch area with stone paving, _nice_ , raised flower beds with stone walls… they're running out of arable dirt, granted, but for that Clay makes them a compost box and accidentally grows it full of weeds, which makes it immediately useless.

Now, while Desmond sits on one of the stone divans and tries to make himself comfortable, Clay is making… he has no idea. The guy is sitting on the stone flooring he'd made, putting together increasingly smaller and smaller slivers of stone in the intricate pattern – it's kind of like he's making a mosaic, except with raised parts rather than different colours of ceramic.

"Do you think we could make ceramics?" Desmond wonders.

"No clay on the island that I could find, I checked, which is ironic," Clay says, glancing up. "Glass could be doable, but it wouldn't be perfect, and colouring it would be hard. Also, fire issue with making a kiln – getting fire hot enough would take turning all the wood we have into charcoal."

"Hm," Desmond answers, leaning back and sighing. Pillows would be nice, but the divan isn't so bad. Clay had made it bigger than it needed to be, and it's really more of a sun chair than a divan. "Charcoal is like… mostly carbon, right? Could you copy it?"

"I have no idea," Clay answers, tilting his head and considering the uneven block of blocks he'd made. It's almost four feet across, one foot in height, and looks like a piece of modern art. Satisfied, Clay lays his hand on it and says, "Combine." Outwardly nothing about the block changes, but when Clay sits up to lift it up, the whole structure moves as a single piece. It, however, does not lift off the floor. "Oof, made it too heavy. Hmm."

"What even is it?" Desmond asks, curiously.

"You'll see, once I get it somewhere else. Once I finish it, it's not going to be moving," Clay says and looks around. "I think on the shore. It'll look good there – and once it's done, we can use it as a sundial. Win win. How I'm going to get it down there though, hmm. Still haven't been able to make an even circle…"

Desmond looks between him and the weird artsy block, and then sits up, stretching. Clay gives him a look and then arches his brows, as Desmond crouches by the block and eases his fingers under it. It's not actually _that_ heavy, he doesn't think. Feels like it's only about twenty, thirty pounds maybe.

"Um," Clay says, his eyes a little wider, while Desmond hefts the thing up, standing with it.

"Where do you want this?"

"Uh. Here," Clay says and points. "I'm, uh. I was going to dig a hole for it, make it go, like… a few feet in, so that it doesn't fall over."

Desmond considers the shoreline. They haven't done much digging so far, and they don't really have tools for it. Could be fun, but… "Could you combine it with an existing rock maybe?"

Clay hums and peers at the shore. "Yeah, maybe – come on."

At Clay's direction, Desmond lays the stone on what Clay estimates to be part of the islands' bedrock – it's not in the middle of the beach area, so whatever it is Clay's making won't actually work as a sundial. But it wouldn't fall over either, once Clay was done with carefully measuring and selecting the spot.

"Right – here. Turn it clockwise a bit, more, more – there – hold it there," he directs, and Desmond obligingly holds the artsy piece of stone in place, while Clay builds up the base with a little bit more rock, making it as well supported as he can. Then Clay makes a face. "I need to copy it first, shit – um, watch your fingers."

"I'm watching," Desmond says, and then watches Clay Copy the rock he'd made, and paste one exactly like it on top. The bottom fits perfectly into the grooves on top. "Oh, so, is it going to be a pillar thing?"

"Yeah, I guess," Clay says and then combines the base of the stone with the rock below. "There, you can let go. Aaand _Copy_."

Desmond steps back to watch Clay build up the pillar thing, each uneven block fitting perfectly into it and forming a repeating pattern. Desmond eyes it and then folds his arms. It has exactly one foot pattern, with marked indents and rises. "Clay," he says slowly. "Is that a ruler?"

Clay throws him a grin, copying and combining, copying and combining, until he has a pillar of about nine feet tall. The last few feet he copies by standing on a nearby rock, pointing at the pillar like a wizard. It would be ridiculous, if it didn't work. "Tadaah, I think it's done," he says. "Don't think you're going to grow up to nine feet, so."

"It is a ruler," Desmond says flatly. "You made a ruler."

"Yep," Clay says and hops down. "And now we're going to measure you. How tall were you to start with?"

"Six feet," Desmond says. "Pretty much exactly."

"Nice, that's handy," Clay says, takes a piece of square rock from his pocket, and puts it at six foot mark on the pillar. " _Combine_. Up against the thing, Seventeen. And stand up straight – don't slouch. Spine against the rock."

Desmond sighs, and steps against the rock, feeling like he hasn't since he was eight and his mother still obliged him, measuring him against previous marks made against the kitchen doorframe. Clay peers at the top of his head and then, unable to see it from his angle, climbs the nearby rock to see.

"Damn," Clay mutters.

Desmond looks at the six feet mark – it's sticking out of the stone pillar near the bottom of his ear. And sure, he knew he'd grown a lot the last month or so, how much shorter Clay now is compared to him told him as much, but… that's a little more concrete than _whoa, I'm a bit taller, huh?_

"How much is it?" Desmond asks, looking at Clay.

"About six inches," Clay says and looks at him. "Six foot six, you overachiever. Do you think it's stopping anytime soon?"

"Honestly? Doesn't feel like it," Desmond says, shifting his shoulders slightly. "What was it you said, twenty inches?"

"That was just an educated guess on my part, I don't actually know the exact height statistics of the Isu, but yeah, thereabout maybe," Clay says, folding his arms and looking at him. "You don't seem to be having as many issues anymore. With growing pains, I mean."

"My legs aren't uneven anymore, and I think I'm getting used to it," Desmond admits, tilting his head up and looking at the pillar. "So, if I really grew full twenty inches, it'd put me up… here," he holds his hand up near between the seven and eight feet marks.

It's still pretty far.

Clay clears his throat. "Just out of idle curiosity and overwhelming fear of you dropping down dead," he says. "Have you had any lightheadedness, difficulty in breathing, spots in your eyes when you stand up – you know, the sort of issues that might come with your brain not being able to get the blood and oxygen it needs?"

"Not that I've noticed," Desmond admits. "Mostly it's just aching legs and arms, and like… mild discomfort all over."

Clay considers him and then, shaking his head, hops down from the rock. "Well, it's not like I could do anything for you anyway, if your heart gave out. Do me a favour, tell me if you have… any issues, or anything. And maybe put your feet up if you feel faint."

"I'm fine, Clay, I think it's going… pretty well, all things considered," Desmond answers, sighing.

"You know, body dysphoria is a thing too, which you might want to keep in mind."

Desmond blinks, rubbing at his neck. "What, like thing trans people get?"

"Can also happen with other people," Clay says and points at him. "You're like… changing a lot. I don't even want to know how you're putting on all this mass, but you are – you could make a whole another person with the stuff you're adding in, probably. That kind of thing can fuck with people."

Desmond tilts his head a little and then hums. "So that would be like… what? Discomfort?"

"Feeling your body isn't right, isn't yours, isn't the right shape or sex or whatever. General feeling that your body is wrong, some way or another," Clay says and eyes him up and down. "You feeling anything like that?"

Desmond considers himself. He's still sad about having to had ripped his clothes, and that he can't wear his hoodie anymore. Sides of his jeans had to be completely split at the seams, and now there's constantly bigger gap there held there by paracord, and honestly, he's feeling a bit indecent – he's showing skin all the way down from his armpit down to his ankles. He can't wear shoes anymore either, they're too small now, and his underwear is completely a lost cause. It's _inconvenient_.

But if he had fitting clothes… it'd be fine. Aside from that, really, he doesn't feel any different. Just in mild pain and mildly inconvenienced.

"It's still my body. Mostly," Desmond says, running fingers over the back of his other hand, where the golden lines follow his sinews down his wrist and arm. "It doesn't feel any less my own, you know, despite being bigger."

"And the – the head thing?" Clay asks, motioning at his own temple. "How's the rattling inside your head going?"

That is getting a little… better and a little worse.

Desmond sighs and shakes his head. "I don't know, I'm… figuring it out," he says. "It's not really that big of an issue, not like with you and the," he wiggles his fingers. "Magic thing."

Clay eyes him dubiously. "It really doesn't bother you."

Desmond shrugs, a little uncomfortable. "I don't think it doesn't," he says. "I'm just… waiting for it to finish, I guess. No use freaking out about it now, before it's done – I'll just end up freaking out about, I don't know. Unfinished product. I'll freak out once I'm done and know what it is I'm going to have to deal with, permanently."

Clay stares at him. "What?" he asks. "How can you just – who _thinks_ like that? How can you just _set the issue aside_ for a later date, how is that healthy?"

Desmond shrugs. "Works for me," he says. "I'm good for now, Clay, really. I'll let you know if that changes, alright?"

The other Animus Subject considers him dubiously. "Wonder if that's Desmond thing or Isu Brain Chemistry thing," he wonders. "Like, humans freak out about everything, because survival instincts and self-interest and stuff. It's, statistically speaking, safer to be afraid and suspicious and pre-judgemental of everything than jump straight into new things. Isu didn't quite get the monkey out of the man there – I always figured Isu didn't have that, you know. Self-interest and survival-based brain hang-ups, since they were functionally immortal and almost all-powerful."

"Huh. So Isu had no anxiety?" Desmond wonders.

"Maybe? Lucky bastards. It would explain some things, though," Clay muses. "About the war and then the solar flare and stuff – like… Isu were assholes and all, but they definitely approached the war at a different angle. For humans it was about freedom and survival and the _now_ and all that – they were desperate and fought with everything they had. The Isu never really took it seriously, though, it didn't _matter_ to them, the fighting or even winning. And then, the solar flare – of whole species, only a handful of dedicated scientists tried to do anything about it, while the rest of the whole species of _gods_ just sat idle."

"So… no fear of dying, no strive to survive, what?" Desmond asks.

"Maybe," Clay muses. "I mean, if you're the strongest, longest-lived creature on the planet, with all the time and power at your disposal… what functional purpose does that kind of existential fear even offer? By the time humans got mass production down and started inching towards having similar-ish quality of life… it just started getting in the way, the caveman instincts. They're not equipped for the world with mass production and plenty."

Desmond considers that for a moment. "Isu could edit genetics," he muses. "If they had some they didn't care for, they could've probably just gotten rid of them."

"You think Isu did eugenics _on themselves?_ " Clay asks, blinking.

"You think they _didn't_?" Desmond asks, a little surprised. "Why wouldn't they? I mean, this?" he points at his arm, at the golden circles that almost but not quite line his biceps. "This isn't natural. This was engineered."

Clay eyes him, looking weirdly surprised. "I just… huh," he says, blinking. "I thought, considering everything, they'd think themselves… above it," he murmurs. "Like sure, you can genetically alter a monkey, it's just a monkey, and humans are just slaves, so who cares. But… themselves?"

"With all the potential benefits, why not themselves?" Desmond asks and shrugs. "Doubt they even got that smart and that long-lived naturally anyway – it had to be genetic engineering. It just makes sense."

Clay eyes him expressionlessly. "Huh," he says then. "It does. It really does. Wonder why I never thought of it that way."

Desmond looks at him. "What did you think, then?" he asks curiously. "Where did you think they get the Eagle Vision and all from?"

"I – don't know. It just seemed…" Clay scowls and looks away. "Fucking Isu engineering. Is awe of the Isu written in human genetics too – are we inherently inclined to be forever awed by the fuckers?"

"Hmm," Desmond answers, a bit awkward. He can't remember ever being awed by the Isu. Mostly they just seemed like dicks, with the exception of Minerva maybe, and even she came across as a haughty and judgemental asshat. He does remember how Rebecca and Shaun and his dad reacted to them, though, to Minerva and Juno…

There had always been this undercurrent of giddiness and nervous tension and occasionally fear. Dad had been awed by Isu technology, revered it, Shaun has held this, _look at me, treading on taboo_ quality with his baiting of Juno, and Rebecca had sort of respectfully distanced herself from it, mentally. All of them _knew_ the Isu were just _people_ … but they'd acted like they were still somehow sacred, something to be respected and feared.

He hadn't realised Clay had a little of that too, in him. The Fear of Gods. Wonder if that's why in all the stories all the messengers of God start with Do Not Be Afraid, and all that. Probably didn't actually help at all, opening with something like that.

"You're not awed by me, right?" Desmond asks, trying to make it a joke.

Clay snorts. "Do a backflip and I'll consider it."

* * *

Clay still has issues and _moments_ with his power. Desmond gets a sense of them – when Clay gets too still and stops moving and doing things, that's when he better stay close, just in case. Clay doesn't go for the knife again, and the wound on his arm heals without issues, thank god, but… there are moments when Clay stops to stare at something like he's doubting how real it really is.

Easiest way to deal with the moments, Desmond soon finds, is just… being there and maybe grabbing Clay into a hug. If nothing else, it gives Clay something to bitch about.

"I'm going to have to redesign the damn house for you, you won't fit in if this keeps on," Clay complains, poking and prodding at his chest. "Where are you getting all this mass from anyway, you don't eat that much more than I do."

"Yeah, I am," Desmond admits. "I'm eating olives. They're like… two thirds of my diet now."

"Olives are _disgusting_ ," Clay mutters. "You're a freak."

"Olives are _fine_. You're just picky," Desmond says, wrapping his arms around him and casually testing for Clay's pulse. A bit high – but not panic attack high. "I've figured out an olive press, too, which means we can get oil. Imagine – deep fried fish."

"I'm sick of fish," Clay says, plucking at his shirt. "I'm sick of everything, I'm sick of this whole damn island."

"Sick of me too?" Desmond asks.

Clay doesn't say anything, just sighs and plants his face in the middle of Desmond's chest. Desmond takes that as a no and rubs at his back.

"What did you want to do – like, in general. Before Assassins, or after? Or after escaping Abstergo?" Desmond says.

"What did I want to do when I grow up?" Clay asks sarcastically, his voice muffled.

"Yeah."

Clay is quiet for a moment, his breath coming at bursts of slower and then faster breaths, until he sighs and turns around, to lie on his back against Desmond's chest. "Fuck, I don't know," Clay admits. "Nothing, really. Before Assassins there was nothing really, I just wanted something _more_. During training with William I just… I just wanted to be an Assassin. Part of something big and important. After…"

Desmond winds his fingers together over Clay's stomach. The guy is losing weight, a little. The fish and olive diet is really not agreeing with him that well.

"After," Clay murmurs. "I just wanted it to stop. The voices, the madness, the memories, the pain, all of it. I just wanted peace and quiet."

"Did they? Stop, I mean?" Desmond asks quietly. He hasn't had any Bleeding Effect or anything, it's been pretty quiet in his head, overall.

"… yeah, but… turns out, that wasn't what I needed, huh?" Clay says. "I miss the noise now. Like. Traffic. Music. Anything. Fucking birds, there aren't even birds here," he sighs. "I guess I just want _more_ again."

Desmond hums. He can't do anything about traffic or birds. "I could sing for you," he says, smiling at the sky, only half serious.

Clay goes still and then, so quickly that he almost knees Desmond in the crotch, wiggles around. "Fuck, yeah," he says. "Sing for me, Seventeen."

Desmond bursts out laughing. "What am I, Ariel?" he asks. "You have a conch shell to capture my voice in, sea witch?"

"Ha, no. Wonder if I could, though?" Clay hums. "Like, the idea is weirdly solid, trapping sound waves in a spiral so that the echoes keep going forever – it doesn't work in reality, waves don't work like that, but then, neither does fucking copy paste. Maybe I could capture audio clips in conch shells, sounds about as realistic as everything else I'm doing."

Desmond laughs at that. "Okay, Ursula. I like my voice though, and I already got legs," he says, grinning. "So don't get ahead of yourself."

"Uhhuh," Clay says, leaning his elbows on Desmonds chest and looking down at him. "You know, I think Poseidon – the real one – was an Isu."

"Wouldn't surprise me in the least," Desmond says, smiling. "So, what do you want me to sing?"

"Anything," Clay says, watching him. "Anything at all."

"All I can think is songs from The Little Mermaid, now," Desmond admits, chuckling

Clay grins. "Sing me Part of Your World, then," he says.

"Not Poor Unfortunate Souls?"

"Definitely not your song," Clay says, watching him. "You're Ariel, if you're someone. I mean, running from home to join the normal humans, ending up being tricked by evil witch, all that."

"Does that make Juno Ursula, then? That's so unfair, why do villains get the best songs?"

"Because villains. Just sing for me, Seventeen, I wanna hear it."

Desmond grins and leans his head back. "Here's hoping I remember the lyrics," he murmurs, and then draws a breath.

* * *

It'll take more than singing to fix things. If they can be fixed.

Clay makes a lot of things during that time. Little things, big things – most of them are useful, like the pool, the water container, the rather awkward but functional jugs made of thousands of stone pieces combined together, which Clay can't even lift but Desmond can. He eventually makes the pier – and cheats with it the way he did with the measuring obelisk thing, making a section and then copying it over and over until the supports he made no longer reached the ocean floor. He even makes them the pavilion.

"So, what's wrong with the house?" Desmond asks, eyeing it. It still doesn't have a roof. They have divans and benches, and Clay even made artistic arches leading up to the olive grove by the partition portals – but their house doesn't have a roof.

"I don't like it," Clay admits, eyeing it. It was started back before Clay had gotten the hang of the true transformative abilities of his powers, so, it's kind of… rough. "I can do better. Make it nicer."

"Would be nice to have _a_ house, any house at all, than not," Desmond comments.

"Yeah, but why settle when I can make it nice? I got the section copying thing down now, I can make it like… better. The sewer thing is messed up too."

Desmond looks between him and the house and then shrugs. "Okay, fine. Should we empty it out, so that you can delete the whole thing and we can start over?"

"Control-alt-zee," Clay says, wry. "Yeah, let's do that."

So they do, carrying everything useful they'd gathered out and piling it all up in the stone pavilion. Then Clay walks around the house, making faces at it.

"What is it?" Desmond asks.

"I think I've figured it out. Sort of," Clay says and holds out his hand against the side of the house. He squints at it and then holds out his other hand to Desmond. "Gimme your hand."

Desmond, obligingly, gives Clay his hand. Clay looks at it, making a face, and then eyeing the unfinished house.

" _Transform_ ," Clay says, and instead of being deleted, the house… changes.

The uneven brick walls smooth out and change slightly – straightening up and combining, becoming all part of the same whole. The shape of the house shifts and stretches, growing taller, wider, bigger. It was never a particularly complicated structure, really – just a box, really – but somehow Clay makes it _nicer_. It looks less like unfinished storehouse and more like… like an actual house. It even gets _window holes_.

"It _is_ you," Clay says, glancing at him, while the lines on Desmond's skin _shimmer_. "I am using you somehow."

"Um," Desmond says, looking at his hands. You could use his fingers as a light source. "Didn't feel like anything."

"I'm thinking you either are only using a portion of the available… potential, or you work as a conduit for the Grey now," Clay says. "And I think I'm in your head, maybe."

"What?"

Clay looks at the house. "Me and this Island. I think we're all in your head."

Desmond's blood runs cold for a moment, and then he grips Clay's hand tighter. It's warm and real in his hand, he can feel Clay's pulse at the wrist. It has weight and mass and… "You're real," he says quietly.

Clay shrugs and looks at him. "Yeah, but I think it's… relative to you," he says. "If you weren't here, I don't think any of this would exist. This is all here because of you. I'm here only because of you – take you out, and it all folds like a house of cards."

"Clay," Desmond says quietly, insistently. "You're real, this is all real."

"How real – and _where_?" Clay demands. "Look at this shit," he motions at the house – which looks a little like something Desmond had seen in Rome. It's still missing a roof. Probably needs some pillars too, going by how much fancier it looks now.

"How is this," Clay demands, "real? How can you think any of this is real?"

Desmond rubs at Clay's hand, a little frustrated. He has no doubts about how real things are or aren't – he knows they both are, and aren't. Reality even at its most concrete, most proven, sits on the edge of probability, and one degree, one _fraction of a percent_ off, and it all collapses into nothingness. Everything is so fragile, on the inside. Even atoms are mostly empty space, right? Not that he knows how all that works, he's never been good at that stuff, but knowing of the Isu, and the Calculations and all the probability manipulation that went into making everything possible….

"Okay, maybe it isn't," he says quietly. "And maybe it is. But we're _here_ anyway, so… so what? So what if it's a little off, and we're a little wrong, and a little unreal. Who cares! Does it make our experiences less real, that they're produced by a… a half-way simulation?"

"Yes," Clay says flatly. "It does."

"Are the experiences in the Animus less real, then?" Desmond asks. "They were just simulations too."

"Simulations someone once lived," Clay says, annoyed.

"Well, we're experiencing this, right? So that makes it real, and if it's only real for us, then… then it is. It's not like there's anyone else here to judge it. It's still _real_ for _us_. Why can't that be enough?"

Clay looks at him, almost sympathetically. "We're living in a snow globe, Desmond. In _your_ snow globe. Break it, and then what happens? I cease to exist, the island ceases to exist. Right?"

Desmond sighs and holds Clay's hand tighter. "Clay, we aren't in a snow globe. I think we're on Earth – we're just… a degree removed from it," he says.

"What?" Clay asks, frowning. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"We have tides, the phases of the moon, the weather changes," Desmond says. "The Animus could do that, but if this was all in my head, why would I bother? I'd rather have it sunny every day. The gravity works normally, winds, smells, stuff like that. It's not in my head, or your head – it's reality, leaking in. I think it's just that we're… only halfway in."

Clay stares at him.

"It's like the Animus loading screen," Desmond says, trying not to squirm as he tries to put the _feeling_ in his head into words. "Between the Earth and the Calculations, between the Eye and… all it manipulates. We're halfway into reality, halfway… not."

Clay says nothing for a long moment, staring up at him. "But it's centred around you," he says. "Isn't it? This island and me, we're still linked to you, fundamentally. Couldn't exist at all without you."

Desmond sighs and looks down at their hands, lifting Clay's hand and kissing his knuckles. "Yeah, probably."

"What happens once you're done cooking?" Clay asks, making a face. "When you're done growing and become a full blown Isu? What happens to all this then?" he motions at the island.

Desmond shrugs, slumping his shoulders a little. "I don't know. But you won't _not_ exist," he says firmly. "I won't let that happen."

Clay makes a noise, a little uncomfortable and disbelieving. "You're a god of a soap bubble universe," he says and snorts.

"I'm not," Desmond mutters, looking down. "I'm just here. I'm not even doing anything. Not consciously."

"Atlas holding the world," Clay says and lets out a hysterical noise. "Celestial heaven in a snowglobe. With a little toy figurine and little trees and everything. Hah."

"Stop it," Desmond sighs, and closes his eyes. " _Please_. Just stop it."

And Clay actually does, falling almost sharply quiet. It's a long moment of uncomfortable silence, before Clay takes his hand from Desmond's, and Desmond feels the detachment almost on a cellular level – before Clay touches his face, turning it towards him, making him open his eyes.

"I'm real for you," Clay says quietly. "All of this is real for you."

"Yeah," Desmond murmurs. "You damn well are."

"And if you stop believing in me?"

"Clay, I don't _believe_ in you," Desmond says, putting his hand on Clay's, holding them firmly against his cheeks. "I _know_ you. I will never _not_ know you."

The face Clay makes at that is a little wounded, and with a frustrated sigh Desmond pulls him into a hug.

"This is all real, I promise you. It's a little askew, but it's real," he murmurs. "You're real. I promise, you're real."

"What happens if you _die_?" Clay mumbles against his chest. "How real am I going to be then, without you there to know me?"

Desmond grips the back of Clay's head and tries to think of something reassuring to say. He doesn't think he can disabuse Clay of this notion anymore. It's too close to reality to manage. "Then," he says. "I'm just not ever going to die. And you're not going anywhere. That's all there is to it."

Clay lets out a sob, and they don't finish the house that day either.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Semi sexual situations and nakedness.

Clay waits for when Desmond goes out swimming – something he does every day, usually several times a day, for no other reason than because he can – before getting out of his clothes. He has no mirror to use, but there's knives, which have enough polish to almost work as a mirror, and using the blade Clay checks everything – ever bit of skin, every scar, every blemish.

Desmond had never seen him naked… he thinks. He doubts Abstergo would've kept records of shit like that, he knows he didn't get an autopsy, the best his body got was a quick and unceremonious drop into the Tiber River, and that was that. In the Animus Clay had been encoded with clothes, only about fifteen, sixteen percent of skin showing at any given moment – which left good eighty five percent Desmond was in no way familiar with. Eighty five percent of him Desmond couldn't have thought up and gotten right.

Though there one gets to the realm of _if Clay is just a figment of Desmond's imagination, then how would he know what's right or wrong_ , but… Clay would rather not go there. As it is, he knows he's based on the AI of himself he made. He knows there's more there, but he also knows things Desmond doesn't. He has to, or else Desmond is the most conniving actor and a complete bastard in history of bastards, pretending to not know the things Clay sometimes told him. And Desmond isn't. Right?

Shit.

There's a mole on Clay's shoulder, which he already knew was there, having seen it before. He _thinks_ it's accurate and genuine. It's the cluster on his back he wants to see – he has a spot, a birthmark, not that big, but still there, on his left shoulder blade. He remembers it being checked at the hospital when he was about seven or so and his parents still cared enough to get worried about him potentially having skin cancer. But it wasn't – just a regular old port-wine stain, nothing to be worried about.

The fact that he _remembers_ the hospital visit at all kind of settles his nerves, and the fact that he can see the distorted shape makes him sigh out explosively. It always looked a bit like Australia to him, though no one ever agreed – it's still there, about the size of two fingers, a lot less vivid than it was when he was young, but still visible.

Desmond couldn't know it was there. Right? Though it's so distinctive that maybe… maybe it was marked down on a report somewhere. Okay.

The scar on the back of his knee wouldn't be. It's not visible – you can only tell it's there by feel. He doesn't remember getting it, he was too young, but his parents had told him. He'd been four, climbing on a steel ladder, trying to work just like daddy and be a big man, and he'd fallen. Almost broke his leg in the process – severely broke the skin at the back of his knee, just at the bend. It's a miracle he didn't sever tendons, but it had been bad enough to need stitches.

Now, if he digs his finger there, he can feel the seam of _weirdness_ in the flesh under the skin, where scar tissue had developed and then stretched and formed weird section of raised bits and little valleys. Here, he'd almost ended his career as Assassin before he even knew the word existed.

No way Desmond would know about this one. No one had. Even Clay's parents didn't know he could still tell where the scar was – or rather, where it had migrated to, as he'd grown and his skin had grown and stretched and developed.

There are other things that reassure him. The weird shape a couple of moles make on his left calf. The tiny little puncture scars on his inner arm, from when he was sixteen, had pneumonia, and the hospital decided to have a trainee draw his blood, leaving permanent marks. The way the nails on his middle fingers twist ever so slightly outward – something you can't even see unless you know it's happening and know how the grain goes. The bump on his earlobe where he, at seventeen, had thought to get a piercing, which had then healed shut and left a permanent mark on the cartilage.

Clay is feeling around his scalp for the hair whorls – he has two, and they both go the same direction, the bastards – when Desmond rises from the ocean. There's nothing particularly unusual about it, and after the first dozen or so times watching Desmond wade out, dripping wet and naked, Clay had more or less gotten desensitized to how much like a scene from a movie Desmond can sometimes look.

This time, though, Desmond is hauling something with him.

And Clay is also sitting on the shore naked.

"Um," Desmond says, blinking at him and then, almost visibly, deciding to ignore his nakedness. "I got crabs."

"I can see that," Clay says, staring. Desmond has them hanging off a length of paracord, and they're all wiggling madly. "I guess no fish tonight?"

"You said you were sick of fish, so… I looked for something else," Desmond says. "Also found some seaweed, so, maybe sushi one day?"

"Do you even know how to make sushi?"

"Probably not, but necessity is the mother of invention and all?" Desmond says, glancing him over and then looking away. "I have cooked crab before – or, well, stood around watching someone else do it. So I should be able to do it."

Clay hums, interested. He would very _very_ much like to eat something other than fish. Or olives. "Any chance of there being oysters?"

"Could be, I think I saw some, but crabs were easier to carry," Desmond shrugs, running a hand over his hair, to push the water in it down his neck. He's fucking _glistening_ in the sunlight, it's absurd. "Do you want to tell me why you have a knife?" he asks then.

Clay looks at the knife and, oh. Right. He clears his throat. "Next best thing to a mirror," he says. "I needed to check something."

Desmond arches a brow. "Okay," he says.

Clay tilts his head. "I didn't cut myself. I wouldn't."

"… I know that. But I worry," Desmond says and steps forward a little. "It's been a rough few days. So, everything's good?"

Clay wouldn't go that far, but… "Have you ever seen my medical file?"

Desmond shakes his head. "No, just what was in your partition. The shrink's notes were the most medical thing there, right? That's about all I got."

Clay nods slowly and then stands up. Desmond clears his throat and then looks away – which is kind of hilarious, when Clay thinks about it. They've been on this damn island well over a month, living in each other's space, and before that they were in each other's heads. You wouldn't take a guy like Desmond for a prude.

"Don't like what you see?" Clay asks.

"Well," Desmond answers, looking very carefully _not_ at him. "It's not _that_. Just. Um."

"Hm," Clay answers, arching his brows and resting his hands on his hips. "I _exist_ for you Desmond."

"Oh, God, please _don't_ ," Desmond groans and then turns to head to the house. "I'm going to see if I can cook some crab pot for us, okay? I'm going to go do that. Okay. Bye, Clay."

"Oh, come on," Clay says after him. "It was a joke! Kind of," he amends, more to himself than to Desmond. "This is like one the few aspects of this fucking place I like! This you and me thing, whatever it is!"

"I am not going to be a rebound-from-reality… _thing_ , Clay," Desmond answers without turning back. "Put some clothes on!"

Rebound-from-reality- _thing_. It would be funny, if it _really_ wasn't. Clay sighs and then looks down at himself. He's not a soon-to-be-seven-feet-tall demigod or anything, but he thinks he's decent-looking. Still got the body Assassin training gave him, more or less, and he's always had a decent shape. Desmond's a lean guy even now, narrow at the chest – it's a good look on him, but Clay's much wider around the chest and shoulders than he's around the waist, and he's always figured it gives him a good form. He might not have Desmond's face and his hair is on the thinner side maybe, but still. He's not bad looking, right?

And this is his body. It's _his_ body. Blemishes and all.

Clay holds up his arm, eyeing the puncture marks, checking his inner arms and wrists. No scars there, even the mark he made not long ago is healing nicely. Nothing from his suicide at Abstergo. It's not the body he died in, maybe. And it might be a re-creation from his memories, probably is… but it's a recreation from _his_ memories. Not Desmond's.

Running his hands through his hair, Clay picks up his clothes from the sand and then heads after Desmond and to the house, where Desmond is crouched by the oven, adding slivers of wood inside it, to rekindle the fire there.

"Can we have sex?" Clay asks, and Desmond almost shoves his whole hand into the oven.

"Clay, what the fuck?" Desmond demands.

"What?" Clay asks. "That's where we're heading, right? I mean, eventually. It's a reasonable question."

Desmond gapes at him for a moment. "Um, okay, yeah – I mean, it is a reasonable question, not that – I mean," he flails and then yanks his hand away from the oven before he burns himself. Even the lines of gold on his face look like they're blushing. "Um. Don't you think it's a bit – uh – sudden? Especially with, you know. Everything?"

"Probably," Clay agrees, folding his arms. "But I thought I might as well get it out there now. Got enough shit going on to start stressing over this. So, is it like a thing, that's… gonna be a thing, ever? Do you even do sex?"

"Um, yeah," Desmond says, looking like he's not sure if he should be insulted or fleeing for his life. "Yes, I do sex, why wouldn't I do sex? What kind of question even is that?"

"You just come across as a bit asexual at times," Clay shrugs. "And I've been in your head. Horny, you ain't."

Desmond opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, looking baffled. "Where the hell is this coming from?" he then asks, helpless. "What the fuck, Clay?"

"I'm not trying to be rude or anything – I'm just _asking_ ," Clay says.

"Yeah, I heard you, and you're still coming across as both rude and also weird as fuck. What the hell?" Desmond asks. "This _is_ a rebound thing, isn't it – you swinging to the other extreme, right?"

"No!" Clay says, affronted. Then he thinks about it and admits, "Maybe? Whatever – I just want to know, alright? Get my ducks in a row here, so to speak."

"My sexuality is a duck," Desmond says incredulously. "What?"

Clay stares at him, blinking. "What?" he repeats. "Seriously, Seventeen, sometimes talking with you is so bizarre."

" _You're_ the one who –" Desmond stares and then stops. "No," he says then. "I mean. Yes, I do have sex, and no, I don't supose I'm that horny in general? I guess? What even is this conversation? Anyway. No, to the having sex."

"What, _no_?" Clay asks, a little surprised by how let down he actually feels.

"Not until you _do_ get your ducks in a row," Desmond says warily, leaning back a little. "And my sexuality is not one your ducks, thanks so much. Where is this even coming from?"

"I just –" Clay starts and stops, eyeing him. Desmond is still crouched by the oven, still wearing just his awkward simile of a swimwear – what remains of his underwear, which isn't much really – and the reality of the situation kind of dawns on Clay slowly. Desmond looks ridiculous, and Clay is still naked.

"Gimme your hand," Clay says.

"Are you going to do something dirty with it?" Desmond asks warily.

Clay blows out a sigh and steps closer. "Just – give me –" he says and takes Desmond's only half resisting hand in his and then puts it on his leg, directing Desmond's fingers to the scar. And oh, wow, Desmond's hand on his bare leg – distracting. Right. "Do you feel that?"

"Um?" Desmond asks, shifting so that he's leaning one knee on the ground, looking completely bewildered and a little alarmed. "Feel what?"

"There, there's like a scar there, do you feel it? It's like a bump beside a divot –" Clay says, pushing at Desmond's fingers. "There –"

"Um, yeah, maybe? Is this a sex thing?" Desmond asks helplessly, and Clay could swear the lines on his face are glowing more than usual.

" _No_ ," Clay says, frustrated and a bit giddy. "You can feel it, right, it's real?"

Desmond hums, turning his body more to him, his thumb resting under Clays kneecap while his fingertips rub around the scar carefully and – hmmm. That's – that's kinda nice. "Yeah, I feel it," Desmond says quietly, looking up at him. "Just barely."

"I got it when I was like four – fell off a ladder," Clay says. "No way you would know about it, right? Even Abstergo didn't know about it. I mean, there might be an ancient hospital record or something, but… but why would you even care? You wouldn't. You didn't put the scar there, you wouldn't know the exact spot to put it in."

Desmond swallows. "Yeah, no?" he more asks than states. "No, I wouldn't even know to put a scar there. Um. I'm sorry about you falling off a ladder?"

"This is my body, Seventeen," Clay says, giddy. "Even if it's built just from my memories, it's _my_ body."

Desmond blinks at him and then just holds his knee, thumb making a soothing little circle. "Yeah," he says quietly. "It's your body. Of course it's your body. You're the one who made it, Clay."

He says it so easily, like there was never any question, the glorious asshole.

Clay shakes his head, half delighted and half frustrated, and bends down to kiss him. It's a bit awkward, the angle – Desmond is bigger, but he's on his knees and he's not _that_ big, yet anyway. But it's also kind of nice, because Desmond leans up to him, and, also… kissing.

Desmond tastes of salt water. Salty inside and out, like he's been drinking ocean water, the idiot – probably on accident when he was swimming. The taste is secondary to the texture – Desmond has nice lips, and his tongue is soft and warm and wet and, mmm -

Clay hums as Desmond's hand trails up his bare thigh and then there's the arm around his waist, hand on his back, tugging him down. The angle _is_ awkward, so Clay kneels on the ground and then, because that puts Desmond at a much higher angle, he pushes Desmond down so that he can climb into his lap and – there, there they're on the same level.

Fuck, Desmond feels so good. Warm, still wet from his swim with droplets still trickling down from his hair. His shoulders, though not that broad relatively to the guy's body, are still broader than Clay's because of how much bigger he is now in general – and damn, he feels like a brick wall, except warm and smooth and nice – wiry muscle without a hint of fat, fucking demigod-supermodel-physique -

Desmond pulls back a little, just enough to detach their lips, his hands on Clay's waist. "Still saying no to the sex," he says. "We both still have ducks strewn about that we need to line up, here –"

"Shut up, shut up," Clay says and kisses him again, wrapping his arms around Desmond's neck, thrilling at the little sensations of _difference_. Desmond is familiar enough to be comforting, but also different enough to be thrilling – Clay can _feel_ the lines of gold against his skin, they feel warm. Desmond has them on his chest now too, it's like radiators, breathing warmth, and his _mouth_ , god.

He should've kissed Desmond before he started growing, who knows what it felt like back then.

"Clay," Desmond says against his lips, even while palming his waist, his hips, reminding Clay he's completely naked here. "Seriously – it's too soon –"

Clay kind of wants to argue, or ignore, or just, just push through and go at it anyway. But Desmond sounds so concerned and serious, and Clay's not enough of an idiot to risk it. So, with a last taste of Desmond's perfect mouth, he stops and just rests his forehead against Desmond's.

"My code self didn't have scars," he says. "He didn't even have a body under his clothes – it was like the elements of the island, just a picture over the empty air, the skin and the clothes all the same thing, just texture with nothing inside it. He didn't have _insides_ and he didn't have scars."

"... Oh," Desmond says then, rubbing his hands over Clay's back, digging his fingers lightly into the muscles, as if to remind Clay he has muscles, again. "Well then. That's… something. But, uh… it's still probably not a good idea to just… jump at it, like this."

Clay grins, squeezing his neck a little tighter and then leans back. "Yeah," he agrees. "But it's a damn good start."

"Mm," Desmond says, leaning a little back himself, looking thoughtful. "I'm – I'm happy for you, I am, and I want you to – to figure it out. But…"

Clay's smile fades a little at that. "No?" he asks. "Did I – fuck, did I – "

"No, no, I mean – shit," Desmond sighs and leans his head down, almost to Clay's chest – before wincing up, flushing. "You're still naked," he says, half accusing and half exasperated.

"I know, um. Sorry," Clay says and considers him dubiously. "There is no way you're inexperienced. I _saw_ the clubs you used to hang around in. No way you're a virgin. This is not about you being a virgin, right?"

"Yeah, no –" Desmond says, wincing, and does the not-looking-anywhere-at-Clay's-dick thing again. "No, I just – I don't want to be your rebound thing," he says. "If you want to have sex with me just because you – I don't even know, want to take your body out on a test drive? Then, no, you can stick to your hand, thanks."

Clay blinks, staring at him with surprise. "Really?"

Desmond's lips tighten a little. "Really," he says.

"Desmond, we're, like, interlinked on a cosmic level," Clay says flatly. "We're quantum-bound to each other. We're so close to being married we're basically the same _molecular structure_."

Desmond makes a face and pushes him back a little. "Get off me," he says.

"What – no," Clay says and leans in. "What's your hang-up? You want relationship? Seventeen, how could we possibly have a closer relationship than we already do? We've been in each other's _heads_. I've been in your DNA. Any closer, and we'd be the same entity. We almost already are!"

"For fuck's sake – Clay, I don't – _shit_ ," Desmond mutters, trying to wring free. "I don't want to – that's not – I don't want you to want to fuck me just because I'm already here and we're connected and you might as well," he says and wrangles Clay's arms from around his neck. "This shit's a choice. It should be a choice. Something you want – not something you just fucking… settle on."

"What – what does that even mean?" Clay asks, confused, while Desmond pushes him off his lap. "How have you ever been something _anyone_ settles on? Look at you, you're like… ridiculously hot."

"I don't want to hear this," Desmond mutters, standing up. "Not from you."

"What?" Clay asks, completely baffled now. "What the hell do you want to hear then?"

Desmond looks at him. "Clay, you're stuck with me, we've established that," he says frustratedly. "But do you actually even _like_ me? Hm? Do you?"

Clay has never heard anything so ridiculous in his life. " _Like_ you?" he asks. "Desmond, you fucking idiot, you don't think I _like you_? I fucking _died_ for you."

"That was Juno's doing –"

"No, it was mine – both times, and yeah, _okay_ , I hated your guts at first, out of principle, because all the shit I had to go through for you, but – but then there was Constantinople and…" Clay trails away. "Do you have any idea how much I… but, but then I got to actually know you, saw the shit you did in Ezio's memories, saw your partition. You know, when Animus started deleting you, I could've just let it. Just go, to hell with it all, fuck the world, fuck everything. Get a little revenge. Didn't even cross my mind back then, because, guess what, I liked you too much to let it hurt you. You fuck," he scowls. " _I don't like you_? Fucking really?"

Desmond considers him warily.

"You're such a fucking decent person, it's infuriating sometimes, I would _love_ to hate you," Clay mutters and stands up. "Nice to know there's an insensitive asshole there somewhere. Very humanising."

"Yeah, okay, fine," Desmond says, a little annoyed. "I want you to like me for my own sake, not because thanks to cosmic fuck ups we don't have a choice but stick together, okay? With this fucking Isu bullshit going on, it's just… hard to tell when people like me or when they just like to use me."

"I promise I like _like_ you, like, for real," Clay says sarcastically. "Come on, be my boyfriend, let's go out on a date and all that shit. It will be so good, we can take long walks on the beach, see all the sights. All three and a half of them."

"Honestly not sure I like you that much myself, now that I think about it," Desmond says, embarrassed. "You're a bit of a dick yourself."

Clay huffs out a laugh. "Up yours, Seventeen," he says. "I don't like you, _seriously_. You're ridiculous. Come here and kiss me."

Desmond looks like he seriously considers just walking away to sulk. But he's a big boy in the end – in oh so many ways – and he sucks it in and walks over. "You're never going to let me live this down, are you?" he mutters, while leaning down to let Clay wrap his arms around him.

"Absolutely never," Clay agrees. "Gonna hold it against you forever. Literally. _Forever_. We're immortal. I can totally do it."

"I'm going to put olives in the crabs. Crab and olive soup, just watch me," Desmond threatens, wrapping his arms around him. "You're still naked, you dork."

Clay snorts. "Dumbass," he says and kisses him.

* * *

Nothing like human stupidity to bring things into perspective, Clay muses later, laying under Desmond's arm. They've been sleeping in the same space – first sand, then grass, now on a mattress made of the said grass, it's terrible, but softer than stone – since coming here, but they still get tangled in relationship hangups. How human. Now here comes domestic discourse and fights and shouting matches. Probably no makeup sex though. Not in a while, anyway.

Not that Clay wouldn't _want to_ , he does. But Desmond's right – it's too soon. And he is probably rebounding here, more than a little.

Turning around so that he faces the big lug he's lying against, Clay looks at Desmond's sleeping face, lit from within by the seams on his skin. Desmond probably doesn't know it, but when he's sleeping, the lines on his skin dim a little – they still glow, but not quite so insistently. Powered down in sleep mode? Or just resting. Who knows. It's still enough to light their bedroom with a faint yellow glow so that it looks like there's a nightlight on, but it's not like… middle of the day brilliant.

Putting one of his arms under his head, Clay lifts the other hand to trace the lines on Desmond's skin. Desmond has more of them than the Isu normally did – and he has writing, which the Isu generally didn't. Lines of script and code, writing out the Story of Desmond on his skin, and then some. The key code of the universe. Why? Was there a reason, a purpose?

"I still don't know what the fuck's going on," Clay mutters. "And I'm still probably going to go off the rails at you. But next to you, I know what I am." It's almost enough. And maybe by the time Desmond finished cooking, and there'd be a fully emerged Isu in the place of the man… maybe by then he'd know what it actually means.

Desmond sighs in his sleep, and his arm winds tighter around Clay, pulling him in. Clay hums and presses against his chest, listening to the thud of Desmond's heart. His heartbeat is faster now, _deeper_. His heart is bigger, and it beats more blood than it used to. There are other noises, the breathing, the general noise of internal organs doing their thing. It sounds… not that different from what human innards sound like. Clay's own body sounds probably similar, sans the bigger heart.

"Where are you going to put us?" Clay asks quietly. "When we're done, where are you going to land the Island? Hm? Off the coast of Acre, in Altaïr's time? How about in the Venetian Lagoon, around the time Ezio was there? Smack dab on top of Long Island, maybe? Somewhere else?"

Desmond inhales and exhales, slow and steady, his body humming with activity, changing, changing…

"Or maybe keep it right here, in between realms," Clay murmurs. "Give me more power, and I'll make you portals, get you anywhere, everywhere, without ever needing to leave. We'll be the kings of artificial Atlantis, the Ys, the Thule. Kind of pathetic, how small our place is, but who knows. We could make it bigger, with enough time. Few decades, few hundreds of years, few thousand… what's to stop us?"

He trails off, listening to Desmond's breathing, tracing the lines shining on his chest with his eyes. Kind of looks like Desmond will have a ring around his nipple. Clay considers it and then gives into the temptation to poke at it. Desmond makes a noise, but doesn't wake up.

"We could change history," Clay comments. "Would you want to? Save Altaïr and Ezio and Connor from tragedy. Change everything. Fuck up Juno's plans, save the world. Die and live anyway… Or maybe you'll take us back to the present. See those techies of yours. Give William hell of a shock, seeing you like this. Seeing me with you. He'd deserve it. Asshole."

Desmond hums and his hand moves from Clay's shoulders up to his neck, fingers brushing into his hair. "Clay, come on, it's the middle of the night," he mumbles. "Can't you sleep?"

"You should get a nipple piercing," Clay says, grinning against his chest. "Would go well with the glowy titty tattoo."

Desmond groans and tries to smother him against his chest. "Shush. Sleep," he says again.

Clay laughs, grinding his chin against Desmond's chest and then wiggling up to get his head to the same level as Desmond's. "You know, you've lost most body hair? Your chest is so smooth, it's ridiculous."

"Mmh," Desmond answers, not opening his eyes.

Clay lays his head down and watches him, his grin fading into a smile. "Seriously, Seventeen," he says. "Where are we going to land?"

"Not falling," Desmond mumbles.

"We're going to have to settle somewhere, we can't stay in-between," Clay says. "Where is the island gonna settle?"

Sighing, Desmond opens his eyes and looks at him. "Wherever we want," he says, his voice deep and resonant with finality. "But not yet. Sleep, Sixteen. We got time."

Clay hums in answer and then wiggles around, to settle with his back against Desmond's chest. Desmond automatically moves to pull him in, arm around Clay's waist, nose buried in Clay's hair. For a moment, there is quiet, and with a heavy sigh Seventeen settles down, going heavy and loose against Clay's back.

"Can we have sex _before_ that, though?" Clay then asks. "Because we don't know how reality breaking it's going to end up being. I mean, you're turning into a God and I am the hacker of the matrix of reality, so –"

"Clay, for fuck's sake…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can never make these two entirely healthy.


	7. Chapter 7

There's not much in the way of privacy on the Island. They have less than half a football field's worth of space on the main island itself, and the smaller islands around it – little more than clusters of rock, really – aren't all that convenient either, for getting any space. Normally it's not a problem – it's not a problem now either – they're pretty used to being in each other's space and up in each other's face, but…

Desmond needs to _think_ without Clay there messing up his head. It's getting a bit noisy up there, noisier than he'd like.

So, Desmond figures out the tallest climbable thing on the Island, and climbs it. It's the portal frame, where the main Synch Nexus had been, the gateway to Istanbul. It's no more than a giant modern art piece now, the portal sits empty, its frame impressive but ultimately useless.

There's not really that much of a view, up there. Ocean's all there is as far as the eye can see – nothing but blank, deep blue sea, with more blue above it, occasionally broken by fluffy white clouds. It's pretty and soothing, and ultimately very lonely. Their Island, the Animus Island, is a lone bit of solid ground in the middle of nowhere. Very literally speaking, at that.

They're nowhere – but also, they're kind of everywhere. Teetering on the cliff's edge of potential, with thousands of ravines below. Whichever way they went, there'd be no getting out.

Sitting on the highest stone, the one propped up against the frame, Desmond pulls his knees to his chest and looks up. The moon and stars are real, and they're situated at a certain point on a grid, but the grid is imaginary, in a way. Invention of humans, fiction which people believed in and decided it was good. And it is, but it is feeble, in that… _Nothing is True_ sort of way. Mutable, if you have power.

Everything is, really.

Desmond's head is starting to feel… a little alien. He still thinks the same thoughts, thereabouts the same way, but it's like there's an echo to every thought, and they turn into overwhelming noise in his head so easily. Like a thought is a string on an acoustic instrument, and if he strikes it just right, there's a clear tone to it, a perfect, harmonious note, echoing in a cathedral, beautiful and symphonious. But add noise, add emotion and fear and doubt to it, and suddenly it's a discordant strum of electric guitar in a cavern, and the echoes get louder and louder and…

Clay turns his head into a cacophony of noise. There's _what ifs_ and guilt and doubt and regret and _what choice does he even have_ and _he died, he's latching onto the only thing he has_ and _obsessive, co-dependant_ and _fuck, what if I fuck him up worse than he already is_ and…

Clay is already messed up. He's also probably pretending. Or projecting. Whatever it is called. Moving too fast anyway, one extreme to the next, latching onto one concrete piece of evidence to prove his reality and ignoring the rest. His powers are still there, all the little proofs of world being wrong, but he ignores them in favour of concentrating onto physical things, things he can feel and prove for his own self. Ignoring the fact of how easily all of that, too, could be fake.

They'd been inside each other's heads. Desmond might not know consciously where Clay's scars are, how they feel under his fingertips. But the data is encoded in him, somewhere. What's to stop it from being a projection too?

Well… nothing. Because he is. But it's Clay's own projection, so, Desmond is not going to say anything about it out loud. Clay came to the right conclusion by ignoring the uncomfortable variables, or… whatever. Let him stick to that… unhealthy though it is.

Closing his eyes, Desmond leans his chin to his knees and sighs, slowly.

When they touch, he can feel Clay's emotions. He can almost hear him inside his head. Clay is like a panicked bird in a cage of spider web, rattling around and too terrified about touching the sides to realise he can just fly right through, and the cage will break and he'll be free. He's too terrified of the outside, to try. Still closing himself in within the limits of _this is what Assassins/Abstergo/Animus made me_ and not quite daring to try and be something else.

It would be _so easy_ to nudge him that other way and… and change him. Show him the way, just point out, _here, this is what you should concentrate on, this will make the noise quieter, this will affirm your reality_. And it's not physicality, not really. What would… in the worst terms, _fix Clay,_ would be him throwing himself fully at the Calculations, into the Grey, embracing it and letting it change him. Let the transformation run its course, let the virus take over – emerge on the other side as a full wizard. Become someone else. A new being, Clay 2.0.

Christ, even thinking about it makes Desmond feel a little vile.

Leaning back, Desmond lays down on the flat stone, looking up at the sky. He wants to help Clay and not, wants to change him and keep him the same, wants to keep him and let him go. Each option is healthier and unhealthier than the last – them, being in a relationship? Probably not healthy, not in the short term. Long term?

Long term, they won't be humans anymore, so who the hell even knows. Desmond's already losing the hang-ups of humanity – part of him doesn't care that other parts know that, if this keeps up, he'll end up using Clay, one way or the other. Clay will become his last lifeline to humanity, and he will change, together they will grow twisted, they will forget what they were, but they will pretend. And maybe it would be alright, but… somewhere underneath they would still be pretending. 

It's a discordant thought, altogether unpleasant.

Part of him wants to put Clay in a glass box, preserve him just as he is, imperfect and still human enough to count, a memento of what used to be. How fucked up is that? Another part wants to egg him on, just throw everything into enabling Clay and whatever path his mental and physical and metaphysical evolution would take, because the result will probably be as _glorious_ as it will be messy.

Thoughts bounce around his head, discordant, and closing his eyes Desmond wills them to go away and stop – he will not do any of these things, of course he won't. Clay might not be completely alright, but he's still a person with free will, whatever he did was his choice. And Desmond's choices were only for himself. And maybe, possibly, for the Island. And after that…

Shit.

He has no idea what he wants, though. There's so many things. So many options. Probability splits them all into the multitude of potential, and he could go anywhere, be anything, do anything. Fuck up history or preserve it, or change it, or… fuck, he could probably put the Island on the Moon, kill them both by asphyxiation, if he wanted to. That's the power of the choice he has. They could go to Europa and colonise the frozen ocean. Shit.

After that, though, it would be set. Choice, diminishing options. Wherever he put them, there they would stay. The Island would snap into reality, like a button pressed, bell once rung, there'd be no going back from it. Atoms would slot into their places in the fabric of the cosmos, and then, then they'd be real.

And at the heart of that is Clay. If it was just Desmond, he'd be happy staying in-between until the end of time – until some past or distant future point in space and time, where some scientist figured out a way to breach the veil, and then he'd get visitors on their way to the Grey. Could be fun, would likely take thousands of years. At least hundreds. Unless Abstergo was already working on it. Shit, they could be. Did they know about the Grey? Do they? What would happen once they figured it out?

Rattling, rattling, rattling in his head. In the past Isu used the Grey. Desmond thinks it was a fairly recent discovery, though. Minerva used it with the Eye. Juno used it in general, resided there, went probably completely mad there. It's where the power of Belief comes from – it's the realm of thought, and human thought is… it's flickering. It's fleeting. It's also mildly technological in a way, because Isu designed humans with organic neurotransmitters in mind – to make them weak to the Pieces of Eden, they made them capable of transmitting into the Grey, and receiving from the Grey. And thoughts rattle in the Grey, too, bouncing back in fits of inspiration and bursts of genius.

Isu, Desmond suspects, didn't even have a word for that, for Inspiration, for Genius. They didn't _have_ that. Their thoughts never echoed into the Grey. Accidentally, they gave humans a power unlike any they knew. It's what makes Clay what he is now. He's not just brushing against the Grey – he's got one foot constantly in it. And no wonder his head is rattling too.

Desmond wants to stick his head in barrel of wine. Hell, he wants wine in general.

The thought rings like a note from a cello in his head, deep and resonant, and frowning, Desmond opens his eyes. He wants wine. Damn, he really wants wine, alcohol in general. Beer. Anything. _Fuck,_ the thoughts almost taste sweet, he wants it so bad all of a sudden.

Sitting up slowly, Desmond concentrates on the idea in his head – which, amidst all the noise, sounds crystal clear and perfect. If thoughts could have taste, this would be spring water after days of being forced to deal with brine.

He wants wine. He wants sweet things. Fruits and vegetables and berries and flowers. He wants the Island _covered_ in things he could eat, things he could feed to Clay, to make into other things, things to make food out of. Making his own wine would be _awesome_. Fuck with all this cosmic brain nonsense shit, just give him alcohol and maybe a bar. A restaurant on the edge of forever. A nice beer garden by the beach, maybe, a patio, a deck full of chairs and tables and customers, something like that. Place to relax, decorated with flowers, lit with candles against the darkening ocean sky, that's what he wants. People and good food and good drink. Plenty and pleasure.

He wants to watch Clay lounge up against some cushions, eating food he enjoys, drinking for the pleasure of it, all loose-limbed and happy and relaxed. And he wants to serve all of that to Clay and watch him enjoy it. Maybe watch him work on whatever he is working on, bend over designs or papers or whatever it is in the world Clay wants to do – Desmond wants to keep him fed and watered and watch him work. Maybe serve him a fruit or two, and catch a taste of it on Clay's lips.

Desmond imagines the Island turned into a resort for unwinding and relaxation. It's probably not as God or whoever intended, but _damn_.

He's never had such a perfect, _beautiful_ thought in his life.

* * *

"Universe gave you godhood," Clay says later slowly, full of disbelief, while they lounge about in the olive garden where Desmond tells him his thoughts. "And you want to be the God of wine."

"Yeah," Desmond agrees and then makes a face. "No. I don't have godhood, I'm just another species. Isu aren't Gods."

"In terms of human history, yeah, they effectively are. Accepting godhood is the first step of recovery. And you want to be the God of a _beer garden_."

Desmond leans his head back against the grass, plucking out a sprig of lavender from a nearby bush and picking at the leaves. "Yeah," he sighs with a smile. "That sounds just right. If I have to be a God, I want to be the God of a beer garden. I want a bar, and infinite basement of the best liquors, I want a guest house full of people who need a break, I want, like… serve weary souls."

Clay just stares at him.

"It sounds alright in my head," Desmond admits quietly. "It sounds perfect."

The other is quiet for a moment, picking at the grass and then looking around the olive grove. "Hm," he says then and crawls over to Desmond, to lie down at his side, his head on Desmond's bicep. "Not what I expected, but… I think I should have. You _are_ an unrepentant bartender."

"Is that a subtle insult?" Desmond asks, winding an arm around Clay's shoulders.

"It should be, but I don't think you'll take it as such."

Desmond grins and looks down at him. Clay's thinking, drumming his fingers against his chest in thought. He looks tense. "What do you want?" Desmond asks, rubbing at his shoulder. "All world at your fingertips, any time, any place – what would you want to do?"

Clay hums, squinting at the olive trees, their leaves rustling above them. Wind is picking up as the clouds gather. "Fuck if I know," he says. "But I think I want to build portals."

Um. Okay. "Portals," Desmond repeats, blinking slowly.

"Though space and time, yeah. I think I could – the concept is there, and it's what I did in the Animus, and what happened in the Animus affects this place. I think I could make it work," Clay says. "The Grey is – there's no distance. We're sort of in and sort of out – I could do it, use it, make a _breach_. I mean, we have the portal frame, we have the partition portals," Clay motions to them, the endless pillars that go on forever. "The work is half done already."

Desmond tilts his head, considering the endless pillars. "Hm," he says, letting the thought develop in his head. Clay's… probably not wrong.

"I could build portals, like… to Florence," Clay comments, looking. "Maybe. To Ezio's time. I'd need to borrow your power to do it, and I'd need to work out the Calculations, but I think I could. Use it to get out of here for a while. Use it to get you grapevines and apple trees and whatever."

Desmond hums. It's a lovely idea, but…. "You don't even like Florence."

"I like it fine. And you love it. So… yeah."

Desmond hums. "If you do, if you can," he says. "Build portals at all, I mean… start with the one you want. Building portals kind of implies you want to go _somewhere_ – where do you want to go?"

Clay is quiet for a long moment. "I don't know. I guess… fuck," he sighs. "I guess the present day. 2012. I wanna see if it worked. The Eye. I wanna see what Abstergo is doing. Check out Vidic's obituary and make sure the asshole is properly dead. Maybe stick a finger at William."

Desmond arches his brows and feels, momentarily, guilty. He hadn't even thought about it. He hadn't even thought of checking if the Eye did what it was supposed to. Some Chosen One he is. Oops. But then, he's pretty sure it did, so it wasn't really an issue anymore. Not his issue, anyway. "Okay," he says. "Sounds potentially dangerous, but if that's what you want."

"And I wanna see Eden," Clay says, brightening up a little. " _Really_ see it, not just in a memory. I want to see it back when it was at its prime, when Eve started the rebellion – fuck, I really want to see that. See what happened to the world after the Toba Catastrophe, see how humans started rebuilding."

That… yeah. "That sounds very interesting, yeah," Desmond agrees, blinking. "Huh."

"And – and how humans discovered the Isu Temples, how they ended up worshipping them as Gods," Clay says, obviously warming to the idea. "I mean – humans didn't think the Isu were Gods, back when they were slaves. Isu were superior, but no one thought they were _Godly_. At least I don't think so. Isu didn't think of themselves as Gods, did they? Fuck, the concept of a _God_ wasn't even a thing! Religion as a concept is human invention, right?"

"I have no idea. Maybe," Desmond agrees, turning his head to him and pressing his lips against Clay's hairline. "I think Juno might've had something to do with it."

"I want to see how it happened. Who fucked up and where. Who fucked whom over. How we ended up – here," Clay says, motioning around them, at the trees and the Island, their whole messed up existence. "I want to see that. I want to see all the ways Isu ended up influencing human societies. Don't you?"

"I'm not against it," Desmond says. "But my mental view is kind of stuck on the beer garden."

Clay snorts. "You are so _boring_ at times, how does a guy with such an interesting destiny end up so boring?"

"Fuck destiny, I just want nice things," Desmond says and runs his fingers through Clay's hair. "What do you need to build your portals?"

Clay hums, turning to lie on his side, pressing his cheek on Desmond's chest. "You," he says. "I think I just need you."

"I don't know if that is creepy or romantic," Desmond admits.

"It could be both," Clay says, giving him a sort of… crazy eyed puppy dog stare, which really shouldn't be as cute as it is. "But I am serious, I think I just need you to be on my side and then I can do… probably whatever. Might take a bit of effort, but… yeah."

Desmond looks at him, considering the thought wafting off Clay, the feeling of his ideas. "You need to decide the rules of your portal first," he says. "On both sides of the gateway. Also, I don't think…" he hesitates. "Wherever you put it, I'm not sure you can move it – on the other side. Reality is bad at supporting teleportation, even the Isu couldn't do it."

"How do you know that? I didn't know that. Did the Isu _have_ portals?" Clay asks, fascinated, and rises to lean on his elbow, looking down at him. "Are you getting information from somewhere?"

Desmond shrugs. "It's a feeling," he says. "I don't know."

"Hmm… Genetic memory?" Clay asks. "Isu had it naturally, after all. Didn't need an Animus to read it."

"Could be," Desmond says and frowns a little. "Doesn't feel like Animus memory though. I just… I just know. Isu didn't have portals, exactly, but they had – short range teleportation thing? Moving matter between two points. I don't think it used the Grey though, not like you would – they developed it before they discovered the Grey."

Clay leans his cheek on his palm, staring at him. "Your head's changing. What else is different?" he asks seriously.

Desmond sighs and strokes a hand down Clay's shoulder, down his arm. "I might be becoming telepathic," he says. "When we're this close, I can feel your mind."

Clay frowns a bit. "Can you tamper with it?" he asks, his voice going quiet. "Tamper with my thoughts?"

"Wouldn't if I could, but no. I don't think any Isu could," Desmond says. "That's what they had the Pieces of Eden for. I think it's an aspect of Eagle Sense – it's like… sense of sound and touch mashed together, but inside my head."

Clay is quiet for a moment, considering him, his lips pressed together. Then, narrowing his eyes, he concentrated on something. "Can you feel this?" he asks and closes his eyes.

Desmond blinks and then, for the first time, intentionally _listens_ for Clay's mind. It's not quite like listening – it's more like he somehow takes his mind and stretches it out of his own body and towards Clay… like his _attention_ is a transformable thing he can mold and shape. It's kind of freaky, but not alarmingly so. A bit like Eagle Sense in general.

Then, getting the feeling wafting off of Clay, Desmond feels himself go hot about the face. "Um," he says. "I'm just getting a general… um, _indecent_ feeling. What the hell are you thinking about?"

Clay grins. " _Size difference_ ," he says, almost vindictive.

Desmond covers his face with his hands and groans. "Fuck, I am going to regret telling you, aren't I?"

He gets a laugh in reply and Clay stretching over to kiss his cheek. "You know the lines on your face glow brighter when you blush? It's weirdly cute, it's like your body can't contain the embarrassment, so it transforms it into energy."

"Shut up," Desmond mutters, leaning into the kiss. "Jerk. You aren't freaked out?"

"We've already been inside each other's heads," Clay shrugs. "Just don't do the stupid sci-fi fantasy thing where you take every stupid thought I have for gospel. I have a lot of really horrible thought spirals, and the shit I think about isn't always the stuff I _want_ to be thinking about, you know?"

Desmond blinks. "I don't get anything that clear, at least not yet," he says. "But I'll keep that in mind."

Clay nods. "Wanna build a portal to, say… New York with me?" he asks then and sits up. "Get you all the saplings and seeds from like Home Depot or something, start on your vineyard."

"Maybe not New York. Not somewhere people can easily find it," Desmond says and sits up as well. "It has to be a place where people won't run into the thing."

"Near New York then. Or near some place – near enough that we can actually do something from it, get places," Clay says. "If, that is, we can actually leave this place."

Desmond tilts his head at that. If they can't... "Let's find out," he says and stands up. "Though you know it will mean that we will always stay in between? We will have to, if you want the portals to work and to make more of them in the future – you won't be able to make them on the regular old Earth."

"Yeah, maybe," Clay says. "But we can always close them and land on the Island somewhere later, can't we?"

Desmond isn't sure they can. He also isn't sure he minds if they couldn't. "Well," he says. "Nothing to it but try, right?"

* * *

It's not as easy as that – Clay might have the thought in his head and Desmond might have some sort of connection to enough power to make it possible, but it's not as simple as wishing for a portal to appear and having it done. Clay has to calculate the thing, code it into reality and back, into unreality too. There's a whole multidimensional universal Calculation to consider too – the portal would have to work with it, around it and through it, to be permanent. Clay can do it, Desmond is pretty sure, with his power. But it takes effort.

It takes close to six days, of Clay toiling at the gate, staring at it and moving his hands over it and then finally carving symbols on it with his bare fingers, leaving marks in the stone with the softly murmured, " _Transform, transform, transform_ …"

Desmond, in the meanwhile, opens himself to… something. Memories, or maybe the Calculation, or maybe it's just some sort of subconscious knowledge that stuck with him from using the Eye. He senses at the _opportunities_ and _probabilities_ , figuring out the where and when. Clay could probably do it too, and better than him, but he's already got his hands full, and Desmond might as well pitch in. Where and when, those are the easy things, anyway.

"I think there are caves in the hills near the Grand Temple, which are closed off and no one's found out about them," Desmond says. "They were part of the city, back before the flare. I think… I think those will be safe. Unless we fuck up, no one will ever find the portal there."

"Alright," Clay says, moving his hand over the portal frame. "Close enough to human population to get a vehicle and get around. But isn't Abstergo all over that place?"

"Mmhmm," Desmond agrees. "Concentrated on the Grand Temple, though. This is good forty miles away."

"Nice. If you think that's the spot," Clay says and runs his hand down. "A bit hard to get stuff in and out though."

"Sometimes it's good to have limits," Desmond says and moves behind him, resting his hands on Clay's shoulders. "You feel like you got it."

"I think I might," Clay agrees and looks at him. "Immediately after the Flare?" he asks. "Time is just distance, after all, we can choose exactly where and when, can't we?"

"Mmhmm," Desmond agrees. "We could make it way before. Save ourselves from dying."

Clay goes a little tense at that. "Paradoxes," he comments.

"Not an issue for us," Desmond admits. "We're not our original selves anymore. We've changed too much, became detached from time stream. It'll just… change around us, now. We could keep ourselves from dying, and we'd still stay, just like this."

Clay swallows at that, wavering under Desmond's touch. Then he leans back against Desmond, tilting his head back. "Now _that_ is a fucking dangerous idea. What happens if you don't die to save the world? What happens if I don't die to save you?"

Desmond hums. "I suppose the world ends," he answers quietly. "Still. It's an option."

"Would you really let that happen, let the world end?" Clay demands. "After all the effort you went through to save it?"

Desmond's not sure he was the one who went through the effort. He was just at the right place at the right time. Maybe he could bypass Minerva's and Juno's plans, use the Eye himself, keep the still human version of him alive and kicking… "No," he says anyway and wraps his arms loosely around Clay's chest. "I guess not. Immediately after the flare sounds right."

Clay looks at him, frowning. "You really are changing, aren't you?" he says quietly. "You don't… care as much."

Desmond looks down, frowning. "It's not that. It's just – I can feel how changeable future and past and present are. Everything is so transmutable. It's not linear, or… if it's linear, then it's a river. And it'll keep on going, no matter how many rocks you throw into the stream. Or remove from the stream. Live or die, time keeps going."

"With or without seven billion people in it," Clay comments. "Desmond, what the fuck."

"No, that's not what I –" Desmond stops and sighs, leaning his head down, pressing his lips in Clay's hair. "I don't know. Of course I wouldn't want them to die, of course not. I did what I did for a reason, I still stand by it. I just… I don't know what I was thinking. Sorry."

"Getting echo-y in that big head of yours?" Clay asks thoughtfully.

"Why do you think I want to build a beer garden? I obviously need a hobby," Desmond snorts and kisses his hair. "My thoughts just – they keep on going past the sensible point where I'm used to them stopping. I just keep thinking on and on in these endless tangents. I'm not used to it."

"Hm. Yeah, hobby might be in order," Clay muses. "Sounds a bit like a thought spiral, maybe. Rumination."

"I guess," Desmond says and sighs. "I _do_ actually care that seven billion people keep living. Would be nice to not have to worry about stuff like that anymore, though. Not something I'm equipped to be thinking about, to be honest."

"I don't think anyone is." There is a moment of silence, and then Clay clasps his hands, pulling them off his chest. "Well, come on," he says. "Let's see if we can kick this door open."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will be travelling tomorrow. 50/50 chance of whether there will be chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> I want some Nice Things. This is gonna have some Nice Things. I hope.


End file.
